


Out of Body Experience

by BairnSidhe, ValkyriePhoenix



Series: Bodies-verse [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, One Shot Collection, Other, Out-takes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2018-08-23 12:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 18,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8327248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BairnSidhe/pseuds/BairnSidhe, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValkyriePhoenix/pseuds/ValkyriePhoenix
Summary: This is a collection of snippetly sized bits and pieces that did not make it into Bodies in Time or any future Bodies-verse work.





	1. God save the… Oh bloody Christ, hand me a wrench.

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank all the amazing fans of Bodies in Time, who encouraged me and made this universe an even better place to write in. Thank you all.

Darcy wasn’t entirely sure why she’d swapped with Steve.  They didn’t appear to be in immediate danger, the only problem was the stalled Jeep with the mechanic half under the hood.

“Miss, if you’d like some help, I did work in a mechanic’s shop,” Bucky said and out of the hood popped an irate, grease smudged, VERY FAMILIAR face.

“Bucky, shut up and let Liz work, she’s good with cars,” Darcy told him.  He looked at her odd.

“And how do you know my name, good sir?”

“I read these crazy things called newspapers.  Also, I used to work in show biz, so no amount of engine schmutz on your face will make me not see the bone structure underneath.  It’s car oil, not contour make-up, and this is a war zone, not a stage.”

“And, oh Captain of the Americas, what do you intend to do about it?”

“Prevent my Sarge from accidentally swallowing his own foot, and politely pass you wrenches.”

“I need a ¾ wrench, but the kit is missing it.  I was using a 4/5 but it keeps slipping.”

"Are you trying to use metric wrenches?  I ask, because that car was made in Detroit, where they use Standard.  Which is a fucking stupid system."  Darcy grinned when the only scandalized gasp came from Monty.  “What do you need wrenched?”

“That bolt, tighter.”  Darcy reached in and twisted.  Liz turned the key when Darcy was clear, but nothing happened.

“I think everything in here is right,” Darcy said, looking at the engine.

“It is, I don’t know what’s got into the beast.  Just died, I suppose.”

She thought a bit.  “Unless the problem is in the ignition, in which case, I’ll help you hot-wire it and that should solve it.”

“Hot… wire?”

“Uh,” the other Howlies looked at her.  “American slang.  Start the car by by-passing the key ignitor and running straight to the wires that trigger the engine.  Method used by car thieves, stolen stuff is “hot” and you do it with wires, so hot-wiring.”

“Aren’t some sort of bloody colonial jingo-boy, perfect American soldier?”

“Ma’am, we in America are not in the business of making perfect people, soldier or otherwise.  But we do make some good ones.  Please see my colleague in the bowler hat for reference.  By no means a perfect soldier, but indeed a very good man.  Do recall, we started our country off on the note of vandalism, theft, riots, looting and very angry people.  I think your family was a little irritated about that.”

“And that’s your legacy.”

“The legacy of my home, yes.  But Steve Rogers, artist and friend is as different from Captain America as Lizzie Windsor, mechanic and driver is from the Crown Princess of England.  Steve’s a dumb kid from Brooklyn, who never knew how to run away to save his skin if someone was being a bully, and he got his ass handed to him many a time.  Cap is the Sentinel of Liberty,” Darcy did the Wonder Woman pose and made her voice sound like a newsreel announcer.  Liz, the future Queen, laughed.  “But who is Lizzie?”

“A girl who’s a little bit lost.  I can’t find the problem in the engine.”

“So we try hot-wiring it.  I’ll walk you through it, you have smaller hands, so just slide under the wheel….” Darcy walked the future monarch through hot-wiring a car while Steve watched beside her in her mind.  “Now touch the leads… yup, there you have it.  Buck, what’s our six looking like?”

“Incoming unknowns, far out, but gaining.”

“Everybody in the car, Lizzie, if you would be so kind as to floor it, I hate unexpected guests.  You would not believe how hard blood stains are to get out of carbon polymer mesh.  Someday I’m going to ask for a stain-guard coating thing.”

Darcy would think that was the worst car ride of her life.  Until she met Dr. Jane Foster.


	2. Fandral the Feminist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fandral has heard quite enough about the idiotic patriarchy, and intends to do something about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's for all the people who were so pro-GoodBro!Fandral, and left such amazing comment threads on Bodies in Time.

“I do not understand, Thor,” Fandral told his friend as Thor told of the differences betwixt Midgard and Asgard.

“Neither do I my friend, but I have been assured it is the case.  Most vehemently, by many women of Midgard, be they warriors, scholars, or rulers, yet this burden is cast upon them by virtue of outward traits.  Tis most vexing.”

“Tis most outrageous!  I feel I must seek council upon this matter, think you that perhaps the Lady Darcy might advise me?”

“I am sure she would, as it was she who first informed me when some scoundrel bard printed vile things about her and her mates.”

<^>

“Lady Darcy, have you a moment to spare for me?” Fandral asked at the door to the Lady Darcy’s work-space.

“Sure, Fandral, come on in, have a seat.”  He took a seat on her plush blue chair intended for those who sought her council in person.  “What’s up?”

Long since used to Lady Darcy’s speech, Fandral composed his thoughts.  “Thor tells me that the women of Midgard are held to a bizarre test of purity based on refraining from bed-play, whereas the men of Midgard are encouraged to find as many partners for such sport as they may, and measure their manhood by women pleasured.”

“No,” she said and Fandral took in a breath of relief, but too soon.  “They don’t have to pleasure us; they only have to find pleasure themselves.”

“WHAT?” Fandral screeched, much as a Vanir fish-wife.  “That’s insane!  I mean no offence Lady Darcy, but the best part of bed-play is pleasing the woman with you.  Tis why the Norns ordained that they should be capable of many pleasings, and the man but one before he must rest.”

“And yet, many men just want to dip their wick, get their rocks off, and go to sleep.  Lucky me, I got myself men who think like you do, but they are rare.”

“Is this ignorance to the finest quality of bed-sport why Midgardian women confine themselves from it?  They do not wish to bother with such fools as would leave them unsatisfied?”

“No, that would be the myth of the sacred honor of the vagina.  Stuffy old dead dudes once decided women’s honor and virtue resided in our hoohas and letting a man touch it would transfer all that to him, leaving us without any honor or virtue unless he was married to us, because then us and our honor all belonged to the same guy.  This was when women did not own themselves.  Somehow, we kept that idea.”

“I want to believe the best of your people, Lady Darcy, but that is barbaric.”

“Preaching to the choir dude.  I fight the patriarchy every chance I get, and many of my heroes are heroines who fought for my right to be a smart, strong, take-charge, boss-ass bitch, who owns her body and can vote and wear pants if I choose.”

“This, patriarchy, it enforces these ridiculous notions?”

“Yup.  Anything else?”

“Can you ask someone to arrange one of those… the thing you had Thor do, when the Embassy opened?”

“Press conference?  Yeah, I can get you one.  Steps of the Embassy good?”

“Yes, upon the next day of Thor.”

<^>

Next Thursday, the press assembled for the first press conference to be held by the friend of Prince Thor.  Many of the reporters knew Fandral the Dashing from parties at the Embassy.  As he stepped to the podium, he smiled his trademark grin that always sold papers and racked up website hit counts, then frowned.

“It has come to my attention that a duel of honor is necessitated.  I take no pleasure in this, nor should any warrior of honor take pleasure in such a fight, for it is not glory to meet out justice, but duty.”  A hush fell over the reporters.  Fandral was well known for his happy personality, and many of the avid followers of Asgard-Earth politics loved him, and websites had been dedicated to his devoted Fan-fans.  Something upsetting him enough to cause him to call for a duel of honor would make the public very displeased.

“Therefore,” he continued, “I have no choice but to challenge the patriarchy to an honor duel.”

Dozens of confused reporters watched as the pretty, dark-haired liason to the Embassy facepalmed.  Dozens of cameras caught her pushing the microphone aside and she hissed (still loud enough to be heard) “When I said fight the patriarchy I didn’t mean _literally,_ Fan!  It’s a system, not a person!  You cannot duel a system.”

“I can but only try, Lady Darcy.”  He reclaimed the mic, and addressed the assembly once more.  “Should any wish to defend this asinine system that punishes women for having nice things they enjoy and permits men to be idiotic enough to let partners go unsatisfied, I and my sword await your convenience.  Also, upon further review of the situation of this ‘patriarchy’, I feel the need to clarify, the Lady Sif, whilst more than capable of trouncing the patriarcy thoroughly, as befits such a misbegotten idea, has far more important matters to tend to, and I am not fighting this battle because I am male and may be perceived as a better warrior, for I am not, but because I am a, as your realm terms it, feminist.”

<^>

The next day, headlines read Fandral the Feminist Challenges Patriarchy to Duel.  He quite liked his new moniker and Darcy gave him a framed collage of his front pages so big he had to ask for help getting it to his room on Asgard.


	3. Big Jim's Big Day(s)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The M4M Craigslist ad results in some surprising consequences.
> 
> Note: Must have read Chapter 2 of Bodies in Space. Takes place mostly between then and Chapter 6.

Big Jim was, as the name would imply, very large.  Not fat, mind you, he worked hard on his figure, but tall and broad.  He’d been told it was intimidating, but that didn’t really help him find a freaking date.  Desperation and way too many cowboy bars in his medium-sized hometown of Fernley Nevada had driven him to Craigslist, looking for a hook up.  It wouldn’t be what he really wanted, but at least he was only replying to men who SAID they wanted a big and muscular man.

He had to admit, the candid’s of the military guy seemed pretty good, a few taken when he was obviously not happy with the camera, but given he said his problem was DADT related cock-blockage, he probably had a good reason to be irritated.  He could use a shave first, but maybe he grew it out to help hide his gayness?  Whatever, it’s not like you found your soulmate on Craigslist.

He shot out a reply, just his name, age, and a decent picture of him that gave an honest idea of a guy a little over six feet tall and packed with muscle.  He was surprised to get a prompt and courteous reply requesting a few more details, his favorite food, what types of movies he liked, any hobbies he enjoyed, all things that made it seem like military guy, Brock, he should remember to call him that, wanted to take him on a date.  Gift horses, he figured when they arranged to meet at a local club.  It was a straight club, but he was going to be meeting a guy who had to be so far in the closet he lived in Narnia, so that made sense.

The lights in the club shifted wildly, and Jim wound up looking at his feet as he went to the bar, not wanting to step on anyone’s feet.  He ordered a Shirley Temple and when the bartender looked at him funny he shrugged.  “Blind date, if it doesn’t work I want to be sober enough to drive.”  The guy nodded and made his drink.  He spotted Brock coming off the dancefloor with a petite brunette woman who looked very irritated.  In fact, if he wasn’t aware Brock was gay, he’d have thought she was tossing him “get this creep off me” vibes.  As he walked up it made more sense when he heard Brock talking.

“Doctor Ross, really, we just need your expertise, that’s all.  You are one of the forerunners in this field and we really want you to come work for us.  It’s a great package.”

“I’m not interested in your ‘package’ and I’m never working for the government ever again.”  She was clearly reading too much into this, so Jim decided to help out.  He put an arm around the slightly shorter man and put a quick peck on his cheek, whispering ‘play along’.

“Sweetie, trust me, it’s not _his_ package you’d get.  That one is off limits, know what I mean?  But in this economy, it’s kind of crazy to turn down a job.”

Jim could see Brock warring internally about outing himself and getting his job offer through.  “At least take the card,” he finally said.

“Fine,” she sighed, taking it with two fingers and dropping it in a bag of silver powder that encrusted the end she’d touched in greenish clumps.  “Knock-out drugs, Agent Rumlow?  So very tacky,” she said.

“But, how?” Brock insisted, moving to grab her as Jim realized he’d been played, and by a fucking date rapist, no less.  Jim grabbed his arms and hauled.

“Run!” he shouted as his gift-horse turned Trojan-horse started to fight him with strength and speed.  He may not have wanted what he said he wanted, but he probably was military.  Jim was staggering when suddenly Brock fell limply to the ground.  Doctor Ross was peeling off a pair of flesh tone latex gloves.

“I’d buy you a drink, but I think you need a hospital, come on, I’ll drive, they probably tagged my car, so where’s yours?”  Jim slurred out the plate number on his pick-up as she hauled him out the back.  “Don’t worry, I have experience with large guys,” she comforted as he tried to stop her from pushing him into the cab.  He was sure he’d fall and hit her.  At the hospital, she got him checked in and he asked her to visit him when they allowed that.  She scrawled a number on a napkin and left quickly.  He didn’t blame her; he’d been an idiot.

A day later he called and she told him she’d stop by, under an alias, Dr. Cerise.  Apparently, she had been having trouble like this for a while, he thought.  She snuck in some brownies and they were eating when a handsome younger man in a uniform knocked at the door.  Betty made to run but he ignored her and went straight to Jim.

“Um, my, uh I guess you could call her a boss?  She’s in charge of making sure I do my job right, anyway.  Well, uh, she knew Agent Rumlow wasn’t supposed to be there, and she couldn’t send anyone from our end, because she needed to prove he was dirty, so… she said to tell you she was sorry about the ad.”  He thrust out a gift basket and Jim shifted to take it, forgetting the immodesty of hospital gowns in his interest in the gift card to a really nice sushi restaurant and a cd he didn’t recognize of P!nk.

“Is this the unreleased new album?”

“No, it’s just a single, Agent Romanov has connection, her partner did some work with Ms. Moore.  So she got an early copy for you, but it’s not the whole album.  Not even Agent Romanov can do that.  I, uh, peeked, it’s not the one slated for July release, though.”

“You’re into Pink?”

“She’s my favorite singer.  Of basically all time.  Minor exceptions for Beyoncé and Idina Menzel, of course.  Um, your gown is uh….”  Jim realized the gown had slipped and pooled at his lap, thank god, the cute stammering agent would have gotten more than should really be seen on first meeting otherwise.  And he really was cute.  Jim looked at the card.

“Do you like sushi?  Because I have a two-hundred-dollar gift card to the best sushi place in Reno.  It’s a bit of a drive, and you can totally say no, if it’s going to cause problems, but… I want to listen to the song with you and there’s enough on the card we could both get whatever,” he stalled out at the wide eyed look.  “I think the pain medication disconnected my brain to mouth filter or maybe you are just really cute, I’m gonna stop now.”  And this was why he was perpetually dateless.

“I like sushi.”

<^>

The letter read:

Together with their families,

Mr. James Sinclair and Agent Paul Miller

request the pleasure of your company  
at the celebration of their marriage

Saturday, the seventh of May  
two thousand sixteen  
at half past four in the afternoon

Deity Events  
368 Atlantic Ave,

Brooklyn, New York

Dinner and dancing to follow.

"You did good, Nat."

"Thanks Darcy.  You realize this means shopping right?"

"Can't I just ask Pepper to...?"

"NO!  My seamstress would be hurt if I didn't take you to her.  Moya Mama will not go to this wedding in something made by a _Named_ designer.  Katenka likes you."

"Chert voz'mi."

"Your accent is still terrible.


	4. Loki and the Harrow Twins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki gets some visitors while in the infirmary at SHIELD HQ.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for ValkyriePhoenix who won the Guess That Code Name mini-game on the fifth chapter of Bodies in Space. It features Loki and her characters, the Harrow twins, as seen in Code Chartreuse which is amazing and you should go read it.

Loki was laying perfectly still, reciting the basic principles of seidr in his head for the fiftieth time and wondering why he’d agreed, no, _volunteered_ for this role.  Oh, yes, he was studying his Shadow Sister and learning how she remained such an honorable warrior when such tragedy had touched her life.  She seemed to focus on preventing other tragedy, and oft put herself in danger to do so.  Perhaps, he could learn something about this action and its effects by doing so, but he really felt that this particular choice was not one of his better ones.  It was tedious.

Then he heard the noise.

A faint rattle, soft enough no Midgardian could hear it, coming from the grate placed high on the wall.  The illusion showed his eyes closed, but he could still see the small vibration of the grate being moved.  Did the grate hold back some beast?  What was its purpose here?  Was he in danger of some kind?  Did his Shadow Sister ask herself this many questions when she threw herself at danger?

The grate was turned diagonal and pulled inside a shaft, and a small head popped out.  A Midgardian child.  Loki almost sighed in relief, before realizing that he hadn’t hid his sounds under illusion.  The child, in an outfit of green, turned and stuck his feet out, allowing a second child of the same appearance to lower him down so he could drop silently to the floor.  Lady Natasha had made reference to being trained to kill at a young age, could these two be killers?  If they were, they must have been sent by his sister’s enemies to finish the job.  Knowing what pain her beloved Winter’s Soldier had endured before he would do such, Loki felt a stab of hatred at any who would hurt such small children so.

“Dunna growl,” the green clad child whispered.  “They’ll hear an know yer not what ye seem.”  He helped his blue-clad brother, for they must be brothers, to look so alike, soften his own drop into the room.

Cloaking the room in silence and secrecy, to prevent spying, he turned to the two children.

“If you’ve come to kill me you will be very disappointed.”

“Psht,” dismissed the green one.  “Our Unca Clint said he had a friend who might need us.  I’m Collin.  Tha’s Caddell.”

“An yer the one who isn’t who he should be,” added the quieter boy, Caddell.

“How did you know?” Loki asked, the beginnings of a smile at his lips.

“Ye shimmer,” answered Collin.  “An smell like snow days.”

“Really?”  Now Loki’s interest was piqued.  The sight and smell of seidr was only perceivable to another mage, but he saw none of the outer signs.  Of course, they did look very young.  “How old are you?”

“Three an ten months.  We’ll be four soon,” Colin told him, but it was Caddell that caught his interest.

“What are you seeing, little one?”

“Ev’rybody’s actin’ normal.  They haven’t sounded any alarms.  They do that when we’re seen out, an we shoulda been, by now.  The walls are glass,” he explained as a white garbed healer passed by them.

“I shrouded the room.  They won’t see or hear what they do not expect to see or hear.”

“Wit’ magic?” Colin asked him.

“Yes, with my seidr, it can make me look differently, and do many things, but only because I have studied it.  My mother is much better, but she has had of course, more study.  Have you ever done any… magic, I think your people call it?”

The two boys shook their heads.

“That’s odd, if you saw and smelled my seidr, you must have it.”  Loki slid out from the illusion of Tony Stark and sat cross-legged on the floor.  “I want to cast a small spell, just to test you.  You are far more entertaining than solitude.  Please do not fight it, it won’t hurt much, although it will feel a little tingly.”

“Grown-ups say that when they give you shots that hurt,” said Colin, standing a bit in front of his brother.

“Midgardian grown-ups are fools then.  Never lie when it will be discovered so quickly that you have.  It ruins all the later lies.  If I cast it and test myself first, will you let me test you?”  The boys convened in a different language, one even All-Speak struggled with.  He supposed they might be using a code or cypher as well.  When they agreed, he tossed up a short wall of white flame.  Sticking his hand in it, the flames leached out a little seidr, a forest green hue shot with streaks of intense blue-white and orange overtaking the pale fire.  He removed his hand and rubbed it.

“It doesn’t hurt?” Caddell asked him.

“It does, but more as though I had lain my head upon it for too long a while.  My seidr is returning to that hand, it’s prickly, more than painful.”

Caddell nodded and stuck a hand in the once again white flames.  No change, until his brother did the same.  Then faint sky-blue trailed out to meet a soft pale green.

“Hmm, that’s unusual.  Try holding hands.”  The instant Colin and Caddell touched, the flames about their hands turned a pale blue-green, like the nicer Vanir lagoons.  “Well, it seems you do have seidr, but you share it.  You’ll have to touch to make anything work until you learn mind speech, which is very advanced, although as twins there is a natural advantage.”

“Can ye teach us?” Colin demanded.

“Of course.  I do have to remain here for some time, teaching would be far more entertaining than pretending at unconsciousness with naught to occupy me.”

By the end of the week, the boys had gotten a good grasp on a basic lack of notice spell, a shielding charm and a small hex that caused the sufferer a short sharp sting.  For the stealth, Loki had been paid in a variety of Midgard confections retrieved using the spell, for the shielding charm a small device they called a ‘burner phone’ that would allow him to contact them, and for the hex, a box of pranking supplies.  He was quite partial to the white and red peppermint sticks, glad to have a way to continue to check up on them, and impressed by the ingenuity of Midgardian tricks.  He was actually somewhat reluctant to rejoin his sister, and made himself a promise to try to continue the boys training.


	5. Christmas Carols

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When bickering over Christmas music reaches critical levels, Darcy and Claudia work together to get the teams back in harmony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one goes out to Beth_Mac, who requested more Bodies-verse/Warehouse cross-over stuff. While much of that I can't work into the main fics easily, I did do this. Additionally, I know Artie is Jewish, but go with me on this, assume he picked something.

Steve grew up on the old carols, none of the modern stuff, and somehow, despite usually liking newer music, never got into new carols.  In fact, he despised the song about the reindeer with the red nose, it hit far too close to home for any kind of comfort.  He hadn’t liked what he went down in history for once he was seen as useful, history ignored what made him like that.  So, despite Tony and Darcy doing their best with new albums and singles, Steve stuck to the hymnal.

Bucky loved the new songs, the bright flavors of jazz and rock and blues.  He enjoyed twirling Darcy around until her head swum when Jingle Bell Rock came on.  Darcy giggled and gave him all the music Steve rejected.  He teased Steve for that, and Steve retaliated with Bing Crosby and Perry Como in the elevators on long trips up to the penthouse.

Pete specialized in extremely obscure holiday music.  It didn’t have to be Christmas, any winter holiday was up for grabs when he made playlists for tree trimming and driving around town.  What got on his nerves were the one year floods of a particular song that might have been good once, but turned into auditory acid after the third consecutive store played it.  Last Christmas and All I Want for Christmas is You were high on his list of annoying songs.  He’d play them, but only to prank, tease, or irritate.

Myka had a big secret about holiday songs.  The only ones she actually tended to like were the off color, inappropriate, and somehow hilarious ones.  From The Night Santa Went Crazy, to Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, she loved them.  Not that she’d ever tell, and so she kept the whole thing under a lid of raised eyebrows and teasing Pete over his childlike glee in the season.

Claudia and Darcy both enjoyed all kinds of music.  And frankly their closest people being so prickly over what music to play was annoying.  So when Maria invited them all to her house for Christmas one year, the two hatched a cunning plan.

Maria announced a party game after everyone was supplied with cocoa, eggnog and peppermint tea, as preferred.  She had a playlist of songs from each guest, and everyone was going to try to guess whose favorite song was which one.  Everybody looked at Darcy and Claudia, as nobody had admitted to a favorite song.  The guilty pair clinked mugs.

Some songs were easy, nobody mistook Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy for anything but Natasha’s and Clint starting singing along to Old City Bar by Trans-Siberian Orchestra midway through.

_“When the snow it was falling_  
_The neon was calling_  
_And in case you should wonder_  
_In case you should care_  
  
_Why we're on our own_  
_Never went home_  
_On that night of all nights_  
_We were already there”_

“That’s beautiful, Clint,” Steve said in wonder at the way the plaintive country sounding tune painted a picture of the Christmas he’d grown up believing in.  “I wish we **could** make this Christmas thing last.  Put us out of a job, but it’d be worth it.”

“Surprised you like it, Punk, you always went for the holy stuff,” Bucky said.

“Nothing more holy than helping out somebody in need, Buck,” he replied with a shrug.

The songs continued and when the last strains of Ganesha Pancharatnam faded out, everyone revealed the lists they’d made and nobody had gotten it all right.  Tony was behind Christmas 1915, not Twelve Days of Christmas, which was actually Bruce.  Bucky’s favorite had not been Santa Baby, the truth coming out in a blurted admission by a much embarrassed Leena, but rather Do they know it’s Christmas?

“Really?  You only play happy music in the Tower, Robo-cop,” Tony said in shock.

“I like people to feel happy,” Bucky shrugged.  “In 1984, when the song came out, I was busy finishing Nat’s training and totally missed December 25th coaching her through circumventing sodium pentathol.  It makes me happy that someone was wondering if people who weren’t surrounded by shops and carolers and family knew it was Christmas, because the answer was no.”

“That’s… really depressing,” Pete said.  “I know nobody guessed mine.”

“Baby It’s Cold Outside?” Artie ventured.

“God no.  I liked the last one.  It’s for a Hindu festival in December.  A buddy of mine was stationed at an Embassy in Delhi for a while and sent me a mix-tape.”

“Huh, I had that one as Bruce,” Natasha said.  “I know he liked Kolkata.”

“Not really a family holiday guy,” Bruce admitted.  “But Hulk liked the festival of Holi, I had an incident and went a bit green and people complimented us while I was trying to get him back inside because the street was crowded.  They thought it was really good paint.”

“Well if Pete’s not behind Ho Ho Fucking Ho, I want to know who is,” Clint said.  “That’s a quality crack Christmas song.”  A long silence followed.  Slowly everyone turned to Myka who had her hand guiltily in the air.

“I like the absurd ones.  I want to know how you two figured it out, and I want a better explanation than spy or hacker.”

Claudia shrugged.  “Christmas miracle?”

“I honestly have no idea how that got on the playlist,” Darcy admitted.  “We had you down for Chiron Beta Prime.  Which was based on hacking and spy skills, we got ahold of your YouTube views and found you watch a couple videos of that every year.”

“Huh.  Weird.  Does anyone else smell fudge?” she asked, only half joking about a possible artifact interfering.

“I made fudge,” Maria reminded her.  “It’s in the kitchen.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it, Myka,” Pete said.  “I’m just happy you like something, and it’s not horribly overdone, that whole group, so I won’t get upset if you play it.”

“Okay,” she said, giving in to the warmth of friends and family.  Not the time to worry about that.  Definitely the time to worry about Pete eating all the fudge before the super metabolisms in the house could have some.

<^>

Far away, a smiling figure laughed as she went to stop her bottomless pit of a partner.  A smaller figure creased a worried brow.

“Should you really condone that?”

“If it makes her happy, I don’t care.  That girl is too high on the nice list too many years to be healthy.  Being a little naughty is good for her.  Ho, ho, fucking ho, indeed.”  With a jolly grin, thumbs were tucked in a straining belt.  “Reindeer all fed and ready?”

“Yes, Sir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:  
> Bing Crosby and Perry Como are musicians who had some fairly big Christmas hits, but are not Bucky's speed at all, mostly being crooner types. While Steve has already said he got sick of crooners, Bucky dislikes them because the crooners of his era sang love songs and he and Steve couldn't dance together to them in the dance halls.
> 
> Last Christmas and All I Want For Christmas were both insanely popular one season and the relegated to the smallest sliver of airtime the next year. Some people (like me) believe this is due to over-saturation making people hate them.
> 
> Myka's sense of humor on the show is dry and at times a tiny bit morbid. While she's often pegged as a stickler, the by-the-book to Pete's out-of-the-box, when she does let loose she can get easily as childish and inappropriate as he does. This is why I have the naughty song headcanon.
> 
> The Night Santa Went Crazy is by Weird Al, and details Santa snapping and massacring the population of the North Pole, while Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer is a classic covered by many people and is about what it sounds like.
> 
> Old City Bar is one of the last songs on the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's first Christmas themed rock opera album, and is about a barkeeper giving all the money in the till to a girl who can't get home in a moment of Christmas spirit, inspired by a child who claims that he knows she can't get home because if people can be home, they'd be already there. An earlier line is If you want to arrange it/This world you can change it/If we could somehow make this/Christmas thing last. You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhXSLSltWvY
> 
> Ganesha Pancharatnam is a song for the Hindu festival of Pancha Ganapati. Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9FekdPOs1M
> 
> Christmas 1915 is a song by Celtic Thunder about the Christmas Truces in WWI. Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG3l-OBdcPI
> 
> Do They Know It's Christmas? was a song by a group of assorted musicians going by Band Aid to raise awareness for the massive famines in Ethiopia in 1984. Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WesKXdaWBq0
> 
> Sodium pentathol is a drug used to induce truthfulness. It's debatable if it works well, but I could see the Red Room making Nat take it and try to avoid telling anything, and we do know it has some nasty side effects.
> 
> Ho Ho Fucking Ho is about Santa's worker's greivances and their subsequent quitting of their jobs, (warning, mentions of pedophilia) listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4vqZumvxZQ (Apologies for it being a fanvid for a different fandom, I like that video's sound quality best.)
> 
> Chiron Beta Prime is a song by Johnathan Coulton about Christmas on the prison mining colony of Chiron Beta Prime run by the Robot Overlords. Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3DyxaCYlfg


	6. Home is where the Arc Reactors are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley Keener has grown up, gone to school, and made a family with the Avengers. Now he's home for summer break and gets to see his family again, particularly the more mechanized side.
> 
> Set many years after the events of Bodies in Space.

“Hello Jay!” Harley called as he slung his bag into a chair by the front door of his apartment.  He knew he could have called out with his mind, as he sometimes did at school, but nothing made him feel more like he’d greeted his big brother than verbally saying hello when he came home on break.

“Hello Young Sir,” Jarvis’ pleased voice came from cleverly hidden speakers.  Not that Harley couldn’t feel them all, but he did like that he and his sister didn’t have to see Jay’s parts all the time, that would be gross.  Well, they did live in Jay’s body, which could be seen as gross, which was part of why they didn’t tell anyone who wasn’t living here.

“If you keep that up, I’m either going to call you Alfred or _Mistah J_ ,” Harley threatened, putting a faked accent on the last name.

“Please don’t, Harley, I can barely keep Dad from doing that,” Jarvis said, dropping a large chunk of his accent.  “I love Darcy, I really do, but your grandmother is a _terrible_ influence on him.”

“You just don’t like the Iron Knight suit,” Zoe accused as she came in.  “Can you tell Tony I need a new fitting for the aides?  The school got a new kid and while the healing did wonders for my eyes it fucked up my special ear.”  She rubbed the marginally less clubbed lobe self-consciously.  After a childhood trying to keep her feeling okay about it, having it shift away from the old shape had brought back old worries.

“Of course, Zoe,” Jarvis said as he flashed the written words on the wall she was looking at, her eyes now focused ahead.  “Sir says he’d be happy to this evening after dinner and before Family Movie Night.”

“Great, thanks Jay.  I’m gonna hit the hay before the inevitable welcome home dogpile.”  Harley shook his head at her.  They weren’t dumb kids like they had been when Darcy and Tony barged into their lives, and he could barely recognize the dry cynic his sister used to be when she brought that out again.

“So, who all is home right now?” he asked as his sister disappeared down her hall.

“Sir, Ms. Potts, Prince Loki, Doctors Banner-Ross and…” he was cut off by Harley’s startle as arms suddenly became real and hugged him from behind.  “Vision.  You know that doors exist for a reason, really, I thought you outgrew this behavior.”

“It’s fine, Jay, he knows I like it, it’s not like much else can startle me here,” Harley reassured his big brother.  “Sup, Neph?”

“I have been learning to cook!” Vision said with a lot more excitement than many who saw him working would believe.  Then again, like Hulk, a lot of people thought he was older than he was.  The mind stone in his forehead, and the literal years of data from Iron Man and Jarvis that had been downloaded, helped him fool them, but he had the emotional maturity of a teen.  Which was impressive, chronologically he wasn’t even as old as Harley had been when he negotiated for the first time with Nana Darcy.

“Really?  But you don’t have taste buds… unless you got the order of announcements mixed again?”

“No, I still have no way of tasting things.  But Wanda has been very helpful to me.  She is helping me use scent instead.”

“Oh, _Wanda_ is helping you,” Harley teased.  He was well aware of his nephew’s crush.

“Shut up, she’s very nice and I made chicken paprikash last Tuesday that _wasn’t_ inedible.”  Vision couldn’t really blush, but with his vocal controls he didn’t need to.  “You have grown, Uncle.”

“Well, I’m eighteen now, and you haven’t seen me in nine months, I probably did.  Humans do that.  How much?”  He might not have noticed, but he didn’t doubt Vision’s assessment at all, he had the same scanning ability Jarvis did.

“Five point zero eight millimeters.”

“Wow, a whole point two inches,” Harley drawled.  He was cursed to be on the shorter end of normal, as was Tony, but then again, he lived with super heroes and demigods, everyone was short next to Thor and Steve, so he rolled with it.  For some reason his growth was a source of great fascination to Vision.

“Will you do that forever?  The projected growth curve suggests you have leveled off, but it was like that nine months ago and the readings say humans do not keep growing past physical maturity.”

“Blame Logan and Ms. Munroe, they’re big on bone health.  I drink a gallon of milk a week on average.”

“I do not think copious milk consumption would affect this sort of change.”

“Vision, at this stage in my life, that’s not a significant margin of growth.  I could probably do the same by _standing_ straighter.  You _know_ that.  Or you should, Jay, what have you been teaching the kid?”

“He has recently become enamored of genetic articles, particularly on why certain active X gene mutant phenotypes seem more common than others.  I believe he is willing to set aside the normal data pattern for baseline humans as you possess an activated X gene.”  There was something in the way Jarvis said 'activated' that twigged Harley’s mind.

“You feel guilty about Wanda and Pietro again,” he guessed.  Vision really got hung up on that when Wanda had mentioned off hand her powers activating for the first time when Strucker had the scepter on her.  The scepter that once held the mind stone that gave Vision sentience.  “I thought you got over that?”

“Her headaches are worse now,” Vision said quietly.  “And sometimes she talks to people who aren’t there.”

“People said that about me once,” Harley said softly.  “But I was talking to the washing machine, or the blender, or the car.  They couldn’t see them as people, Vis, but they were to me.  If you want, I can call the Professor and ask him to come out and take another look.  If she does have psychic trauma, it can’t be worse than what Ms. Grey has.  She has an alien serial _star killer_ in her head.  It stays locked up.  Mostly.”

“Yes please.  I just… it caused so much trouble.”

“And gave us you, Vis,” Harley pointed out.  He hugged his nephew.  “Jay wouldn’t sacrifice that for the world.  Neither would I, or any of the parental units.  We love you being here Vis and we don’t care that it took a big scary battle or two to get you.  I mean, look at our lives, when do we not have big scary battles?  We get what good we can out of them, that’s all.  Ask your Dad how I joined the family.  Pretty sure Tony hasn’t decided to regret that yet.”

“I will if you don’t get your tuchas downstairs and help me fend off the ravening hordes,” Tony said from the doorway.  “Chop chop, kid, Betty put me on appetizers tonight and you _know_ how our family eats.”

“So you need me to help you chop, chop chop?”

“ARGH, HOW DID I MISS THAT?!?” Tony groaned.  “I feel like a moron now, thanks.”

“I know you do, you know how?” Harley asked as Tony tugged a hand through his hair.

“Because we’re connected!” the two chorused.  “Jinx!  Double Jinx!”

_Yeah, it’s good to be home,_ Harley thought.

_We’re glad to have you home too,_ Jarvis added in his head and the voice was joined by the distinct signatures of the main Bot Family Tony made, all giving him mental hugs.  He lost the jinx game in the brain dog pile, but he didn’t care.  He just hauled Vision with them, although the machine man could have phased free.  You could always leave, that was a given in this household, but you could never get away, and that was why people liked it here.


	7. Lizzie Windsor, driver, mechanic, and all-round badarse: Better with Age

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzie and her friend Darcy meet Prince William and Princess Kate. This goes better for some than others and Will would like very much to forget he now knows this side of his grandmother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The current Bodies chapter is fighting me, have a side bit. Probably set either during the clean up after the Battle of Greenwich or maybe a little after during a trip to England.

“Good Lord!” the woman’s voice rang out, echoing in the historic halls of power.  William glanced up sharply, and put one hand on his wife’s back.  This could not bode well.  Following the voice, he found his Grandmother sitting with a young American woman.  She seemed familiar, but he didn’t quite place it until she started swearing.  Only one of Grandmother’s War friends would be so crass in front of royalty and only one was both female and startlingly young.

“Christ on a crutch, Lizzie, you can’t be serious. Lamborghinis are sexy, sexy cars, and I can’t blame you for being seduced by their wild, wicked ways… but have you seen the safety reports on the new Aventador? In certain driving conditions, which you know you’d hit because it’s you, gasoline can wind up in contact with the exhaust system. It’s a fucking fireball waiting to happen Lizzie! You’ll end up burning to death you bat-shit old gearhead! Oh…” the Avenger known as the Lieu trailed off as she realized the pair had an audience.  Will smiled a bit, both to be friendly and also because he found the girl’s embarrassment sort of amusing in an odd way.

“Hullo,” he opened.  “We’re discussing cars, Your Majesty?”

“Don’t be so formal,” his grandmother said tartly.  Ever since the Greenwich attack she’d been much more focused and seemed younger at times.  This was apparently one of those days.  “Darcy is practically family.  Even if she does besmirch the entire sports car industry on the regular.”

“I can’t help it if most of them are death traps,” the younger woman returned.   “A Lambo will never be as good as a Ford or a Chevy.”

“As long as you don’t talk that way about Bentley,” Kate said, stepping forward from her place beside him. “I adore the Continental.”

“Oh yeah,” the American Lieutenant agreed. “Now that is a classy car. Have you tried the new Flying Spur? Happy said all his chauffeur buddies are drooling over that thing.”

“Now you’ve gone and bloody well done it,” Will heard his Grandmother mutter. “She came to visit _me_ , you know.”

“Oh, Lizzie,” the Lieutenant laughed. “I’ll always be your friend. You can’t survive driving like yours and not become friends. Doesn’t mean I can’t talk luxe cars with someone who knows better than to trust a Lambo further than they can throw it.”

“Shall I just ring for tea, then?” Will asked, as Kate settled in on the room’s remaining armchair.

“That would be lovely, Dear,” his wife smiled at him as he pressed the call button.  “I wanted to meet your Grandmother’s friends, but there just wasn’t the chance when they were here last.”

“Actually, I think that was our security people agreeing with your security people that putting all three of you in the same place as my family was a fast track to issues with succession,” the Lieutenant said sheepishly.  “We’d never hurt you on _purpose_ , of course, but we tend to have collateral damage during parties and the risk was too high.  We didn’t block Lizzie from coming to the reunion on that note only because we all remember what happened to the last poor schlub to tell her she couldn’t come play with us.  Did he recover, do you know?”

Grandmother shrugged.  “I would think so, it was only a tire iron and I never have had half the arm your Captain Rogers does.”

“There have been Olympic athletes without Steve’s arm.  I meant mentally.  It’s not every day your average soldier gets broadsided by an angry Princess wielding car repair tools.”

“I wasn’t a Princess then.”  Will gaped at his grandmother.  She never tried to deny her family duty or her own status.  “I was Lizzie Windsor, driver, mechanic, and all-round badarse.”

“What?” he asked weakly.

Kate laughed.  “Oh I could get used to this version of my Grandma-in-law.”

“You haven’t introduced the children to Lizzie?” Lewis demanded, scandalized.  “No wonder Charles and Diana had problems, no offence, Will.  I never understood how you let that go so sideways, but of course it would if you were neglecting to take Lizzie out and dust her off now and then.”

“It was different, after the war was over, Darcy,” Elizabeth said defensively.

“No it’s not,” Lewis insisted.  “Everyone needs to be themselves.  You go crazy if you try to ignore that.  Trust me, the month I spent being Steve and Bucky took place in a mental hospital, trying to be something else is not good for you, I should know.  Lizzie needs to come out as often as Queen Elizabeth.”

“Oh, but when can I do that?”  The tone was both challenge and plea.

“Right now, we’re going to a junkyard and fixing up cars, give me a second to call Tony and ask for recommendations of places.  Katie, am I asking for a reservation for three?”

“Oh, I’m not too great with car repair,” his wife admitted.  “I have difficulty figuring out if the oil is right.”

The Lieu blinked slowly, her phone still raised to one ear.  “Stark, we have a situation,” she told the other end as the line clicked through.  “I need an emergency lesson in car maintenance, repair and modification.  I just found out one of our friendlies doesn’t know how to check the oil, let alone MacGyver herself to safety.  Yeah, still in London.  Uh huh.  Okay, see you there.”

“What’s the big fuss?” Kate asked.  “It’s not like I really need to change the oil myself, is it?”

“Katie-pie,” Lewis said soothingly, “it’s a big, scary world, and I want you to know how to at least care for an escape vehicle if things ever go totally sideways.  If New York or Greenwich had gone badly, no amount of charity experience or fancy dresses could have helped you.  A good car that you can keep running on your own, however… I worry because you matter to Lizzie and therefore you matter to me.  Now, I arranged for Tony Stark to give us a lesson on emergency vehicle care tomorrow afternoon, in the meantime, who wants to hit the gun range?”

“Oh, now this is a party!” Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas Queen, Defender of the Faith declared with a squeal more appropriate to a school girl.

“I’m going to go have a bit of a lie-down,” Will announced to the room as his Grandmother and her friend began discussing side arm couture with his wife.

Some things didn’t need to be known.


	8. Strike Team Theta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cameo O'clock! or What happens when Valky and Bairn are bored in the middle of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot for this was developed over several back and forth "What if?" emails between Bairnsidhe and myself, at which point, I asked Bairn if we could stick an edited-for-readers version here because it fit here but not with any of my side of the sandbox. I rewrote the rough plot we both contributed to, and Bairn beta'd. 
> 
> This one's actually my fault. I watched Stick It with my daughter just before her 10pm bedtime.

**June 2011**

 

Some days, Barton hated his job. This was definitely not one of those days. He'd spent two months, so far, under cover as a sports medicine physical therapist working the elite gymnastics competition circuit. Right now, he LOVED his job. It made his competitive, ex-carnie heart pitter patter. Before the competitions opened each morning and after hours, he got to play on the equipment, during the day, he got to watch the finest physical artists at work, and the soap opera that was the social dynamics of elite women's athletics (God, he wished he had a camera and popcorn. He could re-watch it whenever he was stuck in Medical. Days of Our Lives had nothing on the catty viciousness of competitive 16-20 year olds.) all while hunting down bad guys. He was pretty sure his job couldn't get better than this.

 

And then day two of the National Championships started, and the athletes around him blew his expectations out of the water. The day before had been...well, there were reasons he'd never been fond of institutions, point systems, and lawful anal judges, and as the first event of today began, he found that opinion somehow sinking even lower. He didn't know it could still do that.  
  
Mina, the delightful, blonde, Hufflepuff of a girl that he hadn't needed to interact with directly to adore, did an insanely difficult vault that hadn't been done at all in more than a decade, and did it flawlessly, he'd been awed, as had the audience. The judges? The judges took off half a point for their grudge match against the girl's coach and blamed it on a bra strap. The other coaches were the only ones cheering the low score, everyone else was enraged. Then Haley, who reminded him so much of Nat, it wasn't even funny, took the stage, the Scratch Rebellion began, and Clint conference called Nat and Coulson.

 

“Do it, Barton. Do it for all of us,” Nat insisted. Phil sighed and started gathering the necessary paperwork to send to Clint. By the time Wei Wei was spinning on her head on a 4.5” wide raised beam, he'd sent Phil his finalized list of potential recruits. By the time all the athletes were on their planes home, equipment torn down and packed for shipping, and the lights off, SHIELD had their smuggler and four signed agent recruitment forms.

 

***

 

As Clint was needed back at Pegasus, and his four recruits were half of the USA World Gymnastics Championships team of 6 plus an alternate, Nat found herself flying out to begin their SHIELD training while assisting with their training for World's and the Pan American Games.

 

It was the best worst four months since she'd joined SHERO.

 

Best because it was four months without Rumlow, SHIELDRA, sexist prick coworkers, or paperwork, training four remarkably talented girls.

Worst because it was the hottest four months of the year which she spent in southeast Texas training four remarkably trying girls.

 

Joanne Charis was exceptional at infiltration and undercover work, as many believed her to be truly, deeply stupid, but she remembered EVERYTHING. Joanne was also _actually_ remarkably lacking in application of information and comprehending.... anything non-physical, really. She could probably also make Regina George cry, if she felt like it, which was both a pro and a con. She was like a Drunken Master of Spying – without the alcohol: it seemed that if she tried, at all, she was a walking catastrophe, but if she wasn't even paying attention, she was accidentally phenomenal.

 

Wei Wei Yong was delightfully entertaining, unconventional, unpredictable, and had a unique talent for getting into surprising places and learning physical skills with seemingly no focused training and little effort. She was also chaotic, unpredictable, and incapable of being serious for more than 30 seconds in a row, reminding Natasha far too much of a young Clint. Did she mention that Wei Wei was unpredictable?

 

Mina Hoyt was an almost unreserved delight. She was blonde, bendy, and had the attention span of a squirrel on espresso, which led many to think she rivaled Joanne's first impression of stupidity, but the Hufflepuff had good common sense, a heart of gold, and thighs that made mastering Nat's advanced tricks (like breaking necks with her thighs) easy, hell, half the time, she got it right on the first try. On the other hand, she had the attention span of a squirrel on espresso, and Nat was sure Clint was the only one who could keep up with her.

 

And if Mina was a delight, Haley Graham was gloriously reminiscent of many of Nat's sisters, talent, attitude, took “No, you can't” as a challenge, sense of honor and fair play like she had been raised by Papa and Mama, and a Slytherin to boot. She was also a _Slytherin_ , took “No” as a challenge, and was frustratingly like many of Nat's sisters.

 

Nat sighed almost with relief as they finished the year's competition season, and she boarded a 'jet with her four SHIELD-daughters for HQ, where the girls that made up Strike Team Theta took to SHIELD like Elle Woods took to Harvard Law: enthusiastically, and with color-coordinated EVERYTHING.

 

***

 

“You infiltrated a Madripoor crime boss _in a week?_ _”_

 

“What? Like it's hard?”

 

***

 

**May 25** **th** **, 2012; An underground bunker in Nevada's desert.**

 

The extended Avengers team were enjoying some downtime between missions when one, Phil Coulson Agent Roboticus, broke everyone's brain by looking up from his phone with a full-blown Darcy-When-Zola-Computerized-Himself _cackle._ Tony worriedly edged all the pointy things away from Phil as the clearly-mad man called down the hall, “CLINT! Clint! Where's Nat? You need to hear this!”

 

“Phil?? What is it?”

 

“Someone just transferred the handling of Strike Team Theta to Bionic.”

 

Nat began giggling as Clint's face slowly stretched into a Cheshire grin. “Is there a baby agent we don't like that we can send for cleanup? The girls tend to make messes of people they don't like... and he's going to make them HATE him.”

 

“....What?” “Who are 'the girls'?” “Strike Team Theta?”

 

***

 

John Garrett had no idea what hit him. He'd been given a team of “easily malleable, idiot, idealist little girls” to run through several missions while he turned them HYDRA. The files were wrong. He'd picked the most gullible to work on first, only, when she started crying, everything went to hell. Suddenly, the moronic, shallow, rich-girl, was grinning more cruelly than he'd ever seen even Romanoff pull. The Russian mob was after them (him. Shhhh.), IN ROME. The tall, honor-obsessed one was suddenly a bratty, rebellious, 16-year-old, mouthing off at every opportunity and outright refusing to follow orders, “Physics told me no, repeatedly, so I broke physics and did it anyways. What makes you think YOU telling me no will work any better?” The blonde completely ignored his existence, and he suddenly understood why the baby agents called the last one “Asian Barton” ….and just how they wound up in Medical so often when they did. Within a week, he was back at HQ requesting a transfer away from them and crying to the staff psychologists.

 

***

 

The next time Coulson and Clint were discovered chortling away over a mid-afternoon coffee, the whole team just gathered next to them and waited for the story. Nat was the last one there, and at her raised eyebrow, Coulson grinned, “He made Mina cry.” Nat's slow, exceedingly self-satisfied smirk was almost unnerving (to Fitz and Tony at least) as she turned to her phone to get the full report from her girls.  
  
Clint clarified for the others:  
“Joanne is Regina George with a side order of Pepper. Haley is Slytherin and responds to 'No' with 'make me.' Wei Wei is Darcy with extra chaos and 'I take things exactly as seriously as I need to: not at all'. And Garrett made Hulk cry.”

 

When Nat finished reporting the full story to the assembled Avengers, Tony and Steve were laughing so hard they were crying and wishing Loki was there to laugh with them. Bucky turned puppy eyes on Darcy and asked if they could have 32 daughters, if the four new ones were already adultish.

 

Jane threw the nearest thing to her hand (a whiteboard eraser) at him and announced that clearly, she, Nat, and Pepper have dibs first; he can be Uncle-grandpa.

 

He pouted, but agreed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Always follow the comments, shenanigans usually continue there.


	9. Adventures in Body-sitting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy meets Yondu and gives him a little friendly advice.
> 
> The Galaxy won't know what hit it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happens between chapters 58 and 59 of Bodies in Space.

Darcy rolled her shoulders and popped her neck.  Well, Peter’s neck, but it was under her care for the moment.  “Okay, who else wants to make sassy comments?” she asked.  None of the gathered miscreants said a word.  “Probably a smart choice, my friends.  Now where were we?”

“We were discussing the parts I need to help fix up the Eclector’s shields,” a skinny, sort of ragged looking man hissed at her.  “You know that, Peter.”

“Of course I know that,” Darcy sighed.  She was going to have to lie fast.  Fortunately, she had lots of experience.  “I was asking it rhetorically because it tends to freak people out when you go from wiping the floor with them for drooling at you to business with only a mild and sort of cheerful memory lapse and I like it when negotiators are worried about my sanity or lack thereof.  It makes me feel like I’m contributing.”

“Well, now  _ I’m _ worried about your sanity,” the blue guy, Yondu, said.  “Get yer ass on the ship Quill.  I’ll be up in a bit to have a little… talk… about your behavior.”

“Sure thing, Boss!” Darcy chirped, and skipped up the ramp.  Skipping in a grown man’s body was hard, but she needed to work off the excess adrenaline and she’d committed to the lie at this point.  She’d be waiting a bit anyway, she’d tracked down Peter’s grandfather and the two were emailing now, and Peter had asked for some extra time to really pay attention to what he was writing.  Greg Quill was a nice enough guy, who accepted that his grandson had been abducted by aliens as well as you can.  That is, he decided it was definately Peter after a short trivia quiz and then went right to freaking out about that Peter was in space.

In the ship, she leaned against a wall to wait.  The layout was confusing and a lie about Peter’s mental wellbeing and it’s appearance wouldn’t cover getting lost.  Not effectively.

“You, with me,” Yondu said a little later.  She nodded and followed him into a bedroom.  “Who’re you and why are you still here?”

“I’m Darcy, I’ll be coming out for ass-kickage and anything involving manipulating large organizations like spy agencies, governments, crime families, etc.  Speaking of families, stop fucking abusing Peter.”

“What?” Yondu said in shock.  She could tell it was real shock, not fake shock.  “What do you mean abusing?”

“Ooh, boy.  This is going to be a major learning experience.  I’m going to write down some book titles and I want you to read them and start thinking about how you handle Peter.  From a human psychological standpoint, you’ve fucked up, very badly.  These will tell you what sort of environment is appropriate for a young human who lives with an extended adopted family.”

“Right,” Yondu said with a short nod.  “I like the kid, I don’t want to break him.  I just don’t know much ‘bout Terrans.”

“Few do, Yondu,” Darcy said.  “So few actually do.  We have specialists for that, but these are all meant for parents, and trust me, no parent is ever prepared for kids.  You’ll do fine.  And if it goes too badly, you can always ask him to open the link and bring me through to tell you how to fix shit.”

“Thank you, Darcy.  You’re a good sort.”

“Adopted parents have to stick together,” she said with a shrug.  “Besides, you matter to Peter, who matters to Sandi, who matters to me.  We’re a family, however extended and fictive.  Just do right by him or I’ll shoot you in the fucking face and toss you out an airlock.”

“I get the feeling you’d really do that,” Yondu said slowly.

“Of course I would,” Darcy said sincerely.  “I guard my people, and I don’t care where they are or who I’m guarding them from.  I told the King of Asgard to go fuck himself with Gungnir because he mistreated my brother, once.  We were under attack by someone who intended to wipe all light from the universe with an Infinity Stone at the time, too.”

“Infinity stones?” Yondu asked.  “They’re children’s stories.”

“Tell that to my best friend.  She was possessed by one.  I saw another one blow a guy to atoms, too.  Earth is practically lousy with the suckers.”  She let him absorb that and then she felt the tug.  “Peter’s coming back, get on that reading list, mkay?

She blinked her own eyes and glanced at Steve, Bucky and Jillian.  “Sup, guys?  Y’all want steak for dinner?  I’m feeling steak.”

<^>

On the Eclector, Yondu had gone mad.  Or that’s how it seemed to the crew until Yondu took a few aside to explain the secret Terran mind-magic of ‘sci-co low-gee’ and the urgent need to harness it to keeping Quill on their side.

Peter pulled out a little booklet and made another mark in his betting columns.

Darcy Lewis, 7.  Sanity, 0.


	10. Steve's Terran Master's Collection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve puts lots of art in the shared mind-space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has a LOT of art references in it. It actually started as a list and became a short because I wanted to explain why Steve was putting what in, so if you just want the list, it's in the bottom notes. You can copy-paste into a search bar and any of the lines will pull up what I meant. For the Amos Mac collection, I couldn't pick, so it's up to reader choice.
> 
> Also, most of these people or art peices were controversial in some way. Steve's art is pretty art, but very rarely is it apolitical. The closest he gets is Randal Spangler who paints "comfort paintings" of pretty, uncomplicated things that are good for the relaxed space of the cuddle pit.

Steve liked lots of art, and he wasn't really a snob about what counted as fine art, or good art, he just liked art.  That said, the first of the things he added to their mindspace were all classic masterworks.  He hung _Starry Night,_  remembering Bucky's way of describing the colors of everything, even the sky, painting a swirl of ideas in Steve's head before he knew what color was.  It was flanked by _The Scream_  to balance the dark blues with some paler colors, and _Judith and her Maidservant,_  the heroine's sword hefted on her shoulder, reminding him of Darcy and her stubborn fire.  Bucky made a dry comment about their trauma spilling out, but Darcy laughed.  Steve countered silently by putting a painting by Degas of pink-clad ballerinas that reminded him of seeing Nat teach Sandra a few poses and steps beside a Frida Kahlo self-portrait that featured clocks and one of the faded twilight waterlily paintings of Monet.  Darcy kissed his cheek and called him old, so he stuck out his tongue and added Rockwell’s _The Shiner_ , Klimt’s _Athene Pallas_ and Yudovin’s _Bygone Days_ , teasing her about being a feisty little whippersnapper when her eyes got misty.

It was hitting a bit close to home, so he started looking forward.  He put a few pieces by Randall Spangler, showing fairies and dragons and cats, over the cuddle pit.  Peter said something about a gal named Lisa Frank, and missing the bright colors he remembered, so Steve went to the library to bring back a mural by Keith Haring in bright primary colors and an apology that he couldn’t replicate the busier patterns.  Sandi brought them in for him, though, in the form of a large pillow printed with a purple cat with huge eyes.  She suggested helping Peter move on a little by using more modern art, and Steve agreed, happily reproducing several large, pink-backed portraits from Amos Mac, and a poster-sized version of something Jane liked with a brain surrounded by brightly colored neurotransmitters and fun patterns.

The walls were becoming cluttered, and Steve was sitting inside while Bucky helped Darcy and Margaret with some work in the yard, debating over a set of paintings when Jean sat beside him.

“You want me to expand the gallery space for you?” she asked.

“Can you?”

“Of course," she said, waving a hand.  "With a group like this, the real trouble is keeping it small enough to be manageable.  I don’t want anybody getting lost in our head, you know.”

“Thanks Dr. Grey, I wanted to start importing things from the digital side of things, but honestly, we’ve got way more talent on Earth than space to put it all.”  He sighed, stretching his back a bit.  “It’s a good thing we have you here.”

“Thank you, Steve,” she said, standing.  “And it’s nice for me too.  I like your tastes in art, it’s not what I get to see up at Xavier’s.”

“We can change that,” Steve said.  “I’ve got the money, we can add an art studio and I’ll help with material costs.  It’s worth it to have the kids see that they can make art too.”

“Now I know you’re a hero,” she said with a secret smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve’s Art Picks:  
> Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh  
> The Scream, by Edvard Munch  
> Judith and her Maidservant, by Artemisia Gentileschi  
> Dancers in Pink, by Edgar Degas  
> Self Portrait-Time Flies, by Frida Kahlo  
> Water Lilies, 1919, by Claude Monet  
> The Shiner, by Norman Rockwell  
> Pallas Athene, by Gustav Klimt  
> Bygone Days, by Solomon Yudovin  
> Flight of the Fireflies, by Randal Spangler  
> Library Fairy IV, by Randal Spangler  
> Computer Catastrophe, by Randal Spangler  
> Woodhull Medical Center Mural, by Keith Haring  
> Playtime the Purple Cat, by Lisa Frank  
> Amos Mac’s #KindComments collection  
> Neurodiversity, by Sarah Bower
> 
> Notes:  
> Van Gogh had mental illness, and was shunned or had his symptoms discounted his entire life, only gaining fame post-death.
> 
> The Scream is a classic case of "art doesn't always make you comfortable" and Steve knows it. It still speaks to him.
> 
> ALL of Artemisia Gentileschi's work was controversial, she was a female painter and rape survivor who liked painting women badasses from the Bible. Judith in that painting has a sword because she just lopped a guy's head off with it with the help of that same BFF.
> 
> Degas and Kahlo both caught flack for their subject choices, Degas because he tended to paint young, scantily clad (for the time) women and girls doing interesting things with their bodies, and Kahlo because she painted herself and some (ignorant) people thought she wasn't pretty. Kahlo was also very famously flamingly bisexual.
> 
> Monet was drafted, even though his father could have bought an exemption, because he refused to give up painting. He was also broke the first half of his career and died of lung illness.
> 
> Rockwell was often pitted against "real" artists like Pollack and Worhal, even though his art tells a story and is in my opinion very good.
> 
> Gustav Klimt's work was criticized as pornographic.
> 
> Bygone Days was made as a Holocaust remembrance piece.
> 
> Keith Haring was sick with AIDs when he painted the Woodhull Medical Center in Brooklyn a mural of dancing figures. At the time, silence and shame went hand in hand with the deadly illness, and Haring had already caught lots of flack for art addressing the epidemic and depicting celebrations of sex between unusual sets (two men, different skin-color, more than two people, etc.)
> 
> The #KindComments collection features trans models and was commissioned by Instagram for the Trans Day of Visibility.


	11. The Continuing Adventures- Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the Irkutsk Incident, the animals need to be given homes.  
> Per Laura Barton, the Harrow Boys need to be given some training.  
> Per Ciara, she needs to be given a spa week.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This became a monster, stemming from the 10th-12th chapters of Code Chartreuse by ValkyriePhoenix. Read that first.
> 
> As for timelines, the first two sections of this chapter happen directly following the Adventures With Carter arc. The third section happens June, 11, 2011. (The twins birthday is strategically at the end of Ciara's vacation week so that there's a maximum of sated for adventure in the boys and a minimum of 'Ciara needs to go back in the field' from the WSC. She can't go back in the field, she has paperwork build up.)
> 
> Also, this chapter is long enough to require end notes!

Laura Barton tapped her foot impatiently as she waited at the tree-line for Clint to finish landing the jet.  Anything important enough to have her keeping Lila home from day-care and getting into Clint’s renovation supplies had better be worth it.  Finally, her brother-in-law lowered the ramp and stepped out, flanked by two small ponies pretending to be dogs.

“Hi Laura!  I brought you those farm dogs you said you wanted!”

“I meant maybe a German shepherd or a lab mix, Clint,” Laura sighed as Lila shrieked and demanded to be set down.  “Why is my toddler playing with an escapee from the  Pleistocene era?”

“Because ovcharkas are a very friendly breed,” Natasha said, neatly dodging the question.  “I will be in the barn setting up a bed for  the kozlenok.”

“Kozle… kozel, a goat!?!”

“You wanted more farm animals,” Clint said with a shit eating grin.  “And the Harrow Twins would be devastated if we gave their rescue goat and it’s chicken mama to some faceless petting zoo.  Actually, the hen shouldn’t go to a petting zoo, it’s testy.”

“What were Ciara’s boys doing rescuing goats?” Laura asked, then had a flash of what would result in the Harrow boys rescuing a goat, and Clint showing up with two large dogs of Russian extraction.  “Never mind, tell whoever it was I’ll get a jar of the good stuff ready for them.”

“It’s Sharon,” Clint said, ducking his head and running a hand through his hair.  “Make it apple cinnamon?”

“Done,” Laura agreed.  “One jar of That’s Amore and she leaves you alive.  I need one sensible adult male around here.”

“Barney still being Barney?” Clint asked.

“I have him pulling rocks out of the front forty right now,” Laura admitted.  “He’ll be happy to see you, it means less time trying to stay out of bars.”

<^>

“Clint, we need to talk,” Laura said to him after Lila was successfully down for the night.

“That’s not good,” he replied.  “But we should, yeah.  I’m sorry about springing the goat and hen and dogs on you.  I should have called ahead, but frankly we were all fresh off the Voicemail Party and I didn’t want to risk a no.”

“You’re ridiculous, baby brother,” she sighed and ruffled his hair.  On one hand, he hated that, and he hated being the baby of the family, but on the other, it meant that she forgave him.  “I meant about the Harrow Boys.  They need something more stimulating that they’re getting if they end up smuggling home livestock from Russia.”

“I never said Russia,” Clint said quickly.  He knew Laura wasn’t a threat, but clearances are clearances.

“You didn’t have to,” Laura told him.  “Natasha handed me a list of commands for the dogs in Russian, and she spent the afternoon looking at that hen taking care of the kid and sighing.  That means someone was in Russia, and I know it wasn’t you two or she’d have completely different dinner-ruining sweets for Lila and Cooper.”

“Fair enough,” Clint agreed happily.  He was glad Laura put things together well enough that he didn’t have to lie to her.  “So what do you want me to do?  The lesson plans are pretty firmly laid out and I can’t move them onto anything more complex until next year.”

“Invite Ciara to come out here with the boys for her vacation week.  I can teach them basic gardening and keep them busy with physical labor and she can nap in the guest room.”

“You don’t have a guest room,” Clint pointed out.

“You’re right, I don’t… yet.”  Laura grinned and handed him a hammer and a page from a decor magazine showing a before of a back porch and an after of a partially rustic bedroom in blue and white.  “That’s what you get for giving my kids a Caucasian Shepherd and a Russian Wolfhound.”

“Aww fuc-” Clint broke off abruptly as Laura’s eyebrow shot up.  “Futz?”

<^>

Ciara hadn’t been sure what to think when Clint stopped by her house at four am a few weeks after the Irkutsk Incident with an offer that sounded a lot like an order to come by his super secret, super hidden, farmhouse on her vacation so the boys could see the dogs they’d somehow come home with.

Two crap-fest missions where she had to wear heels and one rather fun one where she had to improvise a hang glider out of an exploding high rise in a city that was _supposed_ to be irradiated beyond all livability later, and she decided that if his sister really did have a massive spa bathroom, then Ciara wanted in.  It didn’t hurt that he’d mentioned once that Laura had a certain amount of skill as a hair stylist, and Ciara’s hair was still singed from the chemical fire on her last mission.

After landing the jet at the spot Clint had shown her and trudging up the path with the boys, who thought it was great fun, Ciara was ready for a glass of something alcoholic and a bath.  It was tempting to pull Natasha’s favorite ‘you, I like’ maneuver and breeze in towards the shower, but she resolved to say hello first.

She was greeted at the door of the Barton homestead with a hug from a boy who from the many stories was Cooper and her kids were greeted with muffins from a woman who must be Laura.

“First you eat, then you help me weed the veggie garden, milk the goats, and gather eggs,” Laura told them.  “You’re going to be busy little men this week.”

“She means it,” Cooper warned, ten years old and worldly with it.  “Mom doesn’t like it when kids are unoccupied, she says it gives us  _ ideas _ .  But if you help her keep Lila busy, that’d be great.  She’s about your age.”

Caddell and Colin shared that look they sometimes got.  Ciara debated for a minute if this should worry her, then decided in favor of moving to examine the cookie jars.

Yes.  Jars.  Plural.

She probably should have expected a kitchen that hosted Clint Barton to have a full shelf of cookie jars, but somehow it floored her.  They ranged from vintage decorative ceramic (one looked like a Franciscan Monk and had the inscription ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’ on it), to apothecary jars in clear glass with different stoppers, to modern plastic molded to look like Cookie Monster.  Of course, Caddell zeroed in on that one.

“Ah ap ap ap,” Laura chided.  “The cookies are sorted according to when we earn them.  You may have a Cookie Monster chocolate chip cookie after half an hour gardening work or one hour school work.  They get harder to earn the more fragile the jar is.  And the ones from here over,” she indicated the left half of the shelf, in the old white china and brown stoneware, “are adult only cookies, so that we don’t hog yours and you don’t hog ours.”

Colin narrowed his eyes and Ciara felt like sighing.  “It’s Laura and Unca Clint’s house, boys, so their house rules apply.  Why don’t you play with the dogs a bit?”

“Lila should be up from her nap soon,” Cooper said.  “I’ll introduce you.”

The boys distracted, Laura pulled down a decent knock off Wedgewood jar and opened it, releasing a strong, woody scent.  “Fruitcake rum ball?”

“Yes please.  You know those are going to get raided, right?  Maybe not the rum balls, they smell strongly enough, but the chocolate chip are doomed.  I assume Clint filled you in on what a Code Chartreuse is.”

“He did,” Laura said, setting a plate with two dark balls the size and shape of golf balls in front of Ciara before doing something complex to the underside of the lid of the jar and replacing it on the shelf.

“You seem less concerned than most people are.  I know other _agents_ , ones with kids, who are scared of my boys.”

“Lila is the same age, and trust me, she got her self preservation instincts from the Barton side of the family, not mine.  We figured out ways to teach her how not to die before she gets to kindergarten,” Laura replied.  “So I figure the boys will try their shenanigans as usual, and when they do, they’ll learn a valuable lesson in threat assessment and asymmetrical warfare.”

Ciara raised a brow, her mouth full of rum ball.  The molasses and the candied fruit were gluing her tongue to her teeth and she could not care less, as it was heavenly.  Fortunately, Laura Barton was also fluent in Eyebrow.  This  _ was _ the woman Natasha called her sister, so it made sense she would be.

“My house only _ looks  _ like normal people live here.  If they think stealing my cookies is going to be easy, they need to learn threat assessment, and I’m happy to teach them.  The jars are booby trapped.  It’s a nice object lesson for people who are used to getting away with everything to run into someone who can out-sneak them.  Cookie Monster had his sound box modified to a pitch that tends to make humans queasy and dogs bark, for instance.  Nobody steals cookies in the Barton house.”

“That somehow both disturbs me and doesn’t surprise me,” Ciara said, finishing off two measures of rum pretending to be a cake ball.  “I think you’ve got this under control.  Barton mentioned a spa bathroom?  I need to soak out four covers and five countries worth of stress.”

“Down the hall on the left, blue trim on the door.  Basic supplies are in the basket, but if you want anything more advanced, it’s in the towel closet.”

“Scotch?” Ciara asked hopefully.  Laura pointed to the upper cabinet by the fridge.

“Top shelf, in the safe, the password is three answers from a rotating list of GED questions.  There’s a post-it with the questions of the day on the front.” 

“A safe?  Most people just put a lock on the liquor cabinet when their kids get into high school.”

“My whole family make moonshine; it’s tradition and makes for good bribes when Clint needs them. We all keep the shine in safes, it’s a holdover from when the great grand parents lived in the wettest dry county in Virginia.”

“I see, that’s actually pretty interesting.  But a quiz?”

“It keeps Barney out of it.  I figure when he wants to drink at home badly enough to learn vector addition to get at it, he probably needs one.”

“Barney,” Ciara asked slowly, “not Cooper or Lila?”  She didn’t want to offend, but she also didn’t feel like staying for a week in a home where the wife treated her grown man of a husband like a small child.

“All the adult Bartons have had a problem with alcoholism at some point.  My house is a safe zone for Clint and Barney, so I keep the booze hard to get to.  I’d just declare us a dry home, but I know what happens when they really can’t self-medicate at home.  Clint’s better about it, so he can unlock the rum balls and the questions aren’t that hard for him, but Barney is neither intellectually inclined nor good at figuring out when he needs to deal with his problems.”

“So why’d you marry him?” Ciara asked, licking sticky rum and brown sugar off her fingers.

“So why’d you have the twins?” Laura countered, and poured a glass of milk.  “We’re not there yet.  Spend some time, get relaxed, let me teach your kids how to do farm work and we’ll see.  Clint likes you, so you might be family.  We’ll find out I guess.”

Ciara nodded and went to take a long, hot, decadent bubble bath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Pleistocene era: the geological epoch of megafauna.  
> Ovcharkas: Caucasian Shepherd Dogs  
> Kozlenok: kid, baby goat.  
> Kozel: goat.  
> GED: high school equivalency exam.  
> Moonshine/shine: homemade alcohol.  
> Dry county/home: place where alcohol is banned.
> 
> Notes:  
> At this point Lila is about two and attending half-day daycare. If Laura can't come out to pick her up at noon because Clint is landing the plane and has requested to be met, then Lila doesn't go that day and Laura has four extra hours of very active toddler on a farm.
> 
> Laura's been learning Russian since Clint finally brought Nat home, and she knows the word for goat, but not goat-kid. They're close enough to guess though.
> 
> Laura's version of "the good stuff" is moonshine, which she makes in a small-batch bathtub still. The flavors are all in code based on songs with 'moon' in them, another holdover from family moonshiners in Prohibition. That's Amore is a play on "when the moon hits your eye like a big piece of pie, that's amore". (I'm aware that's the wrong lyric, but Laura's people are simple people.)
> 
> The front forty is a term from the Homestead Acts. Farmers were granted a quarter section (160 acres) and the quarter section was itself subdivided into four quarter-quarter sections of 40 acres each: two front forty and two back forty. Modern small farms don't always have all 160 acres as crops, the Barton farmstead has one front forty of crops, one front forty of livestock, and the back sections are mostly to hide the landing pad and all the other stuff Clint needs to feel safe.
> 
> Laura uses labor as a love language and also as her preferred form of repairing a broken trust. Clint did cross a line with the critters, but he knows it and she gives him something she knows he can do as a way to say sorry in a material way. The end bedroom looks like [this](https://www.houzz.com/photo/36798671-teenage-girls-bedroom-transitional-bedroom-dc-metro).
> 
> Clint tries not to swear where his niece and nephew can hear, and Cooper doesn't go to bed as early as Lila, abut he's still sort of in Specialist Mode, where swearing is okay.
> 
> Clint will talk about Laura, Cooper, and Lila with fellow agents, but he's really secretive about where they live unless it's a fellow HERO agent and he's taken precautions. He goes to Ciara's house, not her desk, because it's more secure.
> 
> Laura Barton has a special way of handling problems, one that arose from a unique family and marrying into a family that contains Clint Barton. Also, her children all got the Barton Nose For Trouble, so she's seen most everything.
> 
> Alcoholism and addiction are touchy topics that I will try to address with respect and dignity, but suffice it to say the Barton Brothers don't have a standard set of backgrounds for their problem. There's a genetic component that they have, which _is_ common, and a certain amount of both post-traumatic and prolonged-duration stress disorders in there too (which can also be common) but most alcoholics didn't get there via underfunded circus medicine and the Barton Bros grew up self-medicating. Barney isn't good at coping without alcohol, because if he has to, he'll go into town and drink until the barkeep cuts him off or he runs out of money. He prefers to drink at home to get over the barrier to talking about his issues with Laura, but she likes to make sure it doesn't become casual. If you or a loved one is having problems with alcohol, please contact a support program for guidance. My family has used AA, but [soberrecovery.com](https://www.soberrecovery.com/addiction/5-popular-alternatives-to-alcoholics-anonymous-2/) has been reccomended as having some ideas for other options. And of course, most psychiatric facilities either can or can refer you to somewhere that can help with detox or the underlying whys of addiction.
> 
> Many modern women, especially the Stepford Suburb Set, tend to talk as though their husbands are incompetent, and it's not a good sign. It is in fact a very bad sign that patriarchy and gender roles have gotten out of hand, and Ciara knows that. However, it's also sort of rude to ask someone why they married their spouse in that context, and Laura sets good boundaries by pointing out that they have both made choices about men and men-related things that could be questioned. She doesn't actually want an answer, it was a rhetorical question to make a point.


	12. The Continuing Adventures- Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life on the farm brings with it a unique perspectives, and the Twins learn new things each day.
> 
> Number one?  
> Laura Barton is NOT like other grown-ups.

Lila Barton was very aware her Mama was the strongest woman on the planet, ‘cept maybe Mama Nat, but Mama Nat was also Lila’s Mama, so it was the same thing.  She was also aware that her Mama didn’t tend to tell people that, ‘cause it might make them feel bad.  However, she felt it was only fair to warn the new boys what they were ‘bout to get into.

“You don’t wanna do that,” she said, and the both startled and one fell off the chair he was using to climb onto the counter.  Lila rolled her eyes like Mama Nat taught her for when people were bein’ stupid.  It’s not like she was even wearing her sneaking shoes.

“We wanna go on ‘ventures, and yeh need cookies for ‘ventures.  Issa rule,” said the one who hadn’t fallen.

“Yeah, but you don’t _ steal _ cookies,” Lila pointed out.  “You _ earn _ cookies.  Or you ask real nice and get an ‘vance.”

“An ‘vance?”

“Yeah, like a maker in betting.  Don’t tell Mama that Daddy taught me what those are.”

Suddenly both boys were paying close attention.  Lila sighed and gestured for them to follow her into the craft room and pulled out paper and her special smelly crayons from Dada Clint.  An ‘vance was important, it deserved the special ones.  She picked out the purple one that smelled like grapes for her and wrote her name carefully at the top of the pink craft paper.

“Now you write your names, an how many cookies you wanna owe me later.  Then I’ll ask Mama to give you those cookies from my special jar.  You can give me your cookies when you earn ‘em.  But you get one less than you owe me, ‘cause I’m givin you my cookies now.”

The boys looked at her, then chattered in some language Lila didn’t know.  She only knew two ana half languages, because she was learning Spanish with Miss Marti and Russian from Mama Nat but she couldn’t read in Russian yet, ‘cause it used special letters.

“Three cookies from me, an’ three from Caddell.”

“Kay.  Write that here, an I’ll go tell Mama to give you each two cookies.”

The boys nodded solemnly.  At least they recognized the seriousness of cookie related matters, which was important.

It was going to be a good week.

<^>

“So,” Laura opened, as she finished trimming the singed bits off Ciara’s hair.  “I think my toddler is fleecing your toddlers for cookies.  They’ve worked out some kind of payday loan system.”

“Are they paying up?” Ciara asked, one red brow arching in the mirror.

“So far, but I’ll have to give them more work if they keep it up.  Let me know when to cut them off.”  She checked the way the hair lay in back and handed Ciara the hand mirror.  “How’s that look?”

“Wonderful, thank you.  I was thinking I’d read some on a mystery novel I brought, do you need me for anything before I get lost in 1950’s Hong Kong?”

“Nope, go relax,” Laura said with a smile.  “I’ll go grab your boys from the yard for a lesson on egg gathering.”

When she got to the yard, however, she decided that a different lesson was needed.

“Colin and Caddell Harrow!  Get your fannies on this porch this instant!”

Two red headed  tots appeared, looking as innocent as can be.

“Do you two want to tell me how the goats got on my roof?”

“Goats can climb really well,” said one of them.  Laura raised a brow.

“I’m aware.  That’s why the goats are kept in a pen with five foot tall high-tensile wire walls.  I also know that no matter how good my goats are at opening loose latches, they aren’t able to open the maze-bolt on their gate.  Cooper’s been inside on the internet taking summer classes, and Lila went down for a nap after lunch when the goats were all in the  _ closed  _ pen.  Does anyone want to tell me who let the goats out?”

The twins looked at each other.  Laura sighed.  “If you two ever want to be able to pay Lila back, you’re going to have to learn to close gates behind you.  Because now Uncle Clint is going to have to go on the roof to get goats down, and guess who gets to give him the cookies he earns from their supply?”

“Us?” said the quieter one, like he was hoping to be wrong.

“Yep. Now let’s go inside and wash up while Uncle Clint gets the goats put back.”

Twin sighs of frustration sounded and Laura raised an eyebrow.  They had the good grace to  _ look  _ repentant, at least.

It was going to be a long week.

<^>

After Unca Clint got the last goat off the roof, falling onto a big pile of hay with the kid in his arms, Colin and Caddell each gave him cookies.  Then they gave Lila an extra cookie, because she had let them get some extra time to earn the rest because they got in trouble.

Lila was nice.

Cooper was nice too, but getting to be old enough t’ be getting stupid like some adults.  Not in a mean way, he just didn’t understand the rules of ‘ventures like Lila did.

“Come on kidlets,” he said to them as they watched their cookies go mournfully.  “I have a fast way to earn more cookies.  Mom says you’re good at languages, and I’m learning French.  You wanna pla y Francophone Scrabble?”

That seemed easy, and Colin thought it would probably make Laura stop being as mad if they stayed inside.  Caddell wanted to run around outside, but he had to agree with his brother and Laura was sorta like Nat Monster when she was mad, so they sat down on the firm square pillows in the living room around the low square table with the curvy legs, and let Cooper put out the game.  The board itself was regular, but the tiles came in a vertical blue-white-red striped bag, and not all the tiles looked exactly the same, like two-three sets at once.

“Dad put it together for me when I said I wanted to learn,” Cooper said proudly.  “He’s not always around, but he tries when he is.  Do you want to go together to make it more even?”

The twins agreed and the game began.  Colin and Caddell figured pretty quickly they knew more words and bounded ahead with words Cooper had to look up, but Cooper was a lot better at planning, and he was still slowly building his points when they had to resort to short words because of space.  When their tummies started grumbling, Mam came and took a picture with her phone, so nobody could complain of cheating, and helped them sit on the not-high-chairs.  They liked the not-high-chairs.  They were the same dark wood chairs as everyone else had, but Mam and Laura had moved the seat parts up to a higher slot on the sides so that everyone was a good height for the table.  Dinner was turkey and two types of gravy, pale brown and white, veggies and bread baked by Unca Clint, which was almost as good as cookies baked by Unca Clint.  Almost.

Colin built a fort from his turkey strips, and Caddell placed broccoli guardsmen, and laid in a gravy river.  They were considering adding a bread craig behind it when Lila poked Caddell’s arm.

“If you just play with it, Mama makes you wait for dessert,” she told them, and pointedly bit a carrot in half.  Caddell nodded and Colin stuck the south wall in his mouth, glancing at Laura just in case, trying to see if she’d seen them playing.

It was going to be an interesting week.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Sneaking shoes: Lila's term for the high-tech spy shoes Nat gives her every time she goes up a shoe size.  
> An 'vance: Toddler for "an advance"  
> Maker: Toddler for 'marker' or IOU, a promise of future payment.  
> Fannies: rear ends, used as a light swear to mean "I'm very mad" in polite southern lady.  
> Maze-bolt: A [bolt lock](http://www.lolwot.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/15-awesomely-cool-geek-inspired-decor-11.jpg) for the extra smart goat.  
> Francophone Scrabble: French language Scrabble, the word-making game with the tiles.  
> Not-high-chairs: Tripp Trapp chairs, an excellent work around for a family with variable sizes in kids. They look like [this](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/baby/detail-page/c26-B001D1A4IS-2-s.jpg).
> 
> Notes:  
> Lila is 2 and a half, the boys are almost three, but they're all exceptionally bright kids. Their language is developed a bit faster than you usually see at 3 (the standard is full sentences of up to 6 words), but the ability to write is only advanced in the boys, Lila's about spot on, being able to do her name and 0-9.
> 
> One of Barney's vices in the comics is gambling, which has gotten him on the wrong end of loan sharks. In this story, he mainly tells Lila things like that so she won't fall for it, but Lila is her mother's daughter and makes everything a tool in her toolbox.
> 
> Lila has a special jar of cookies her mom puts the ones she's earned in, so she won't scarf them down as she earns them, because she tends to get upset stomachs. As a result, she has superb skills at delayed gratification for a two year old.
> 
> Goats do climb well, and tend to like rooftops. Five feet is the recommended height for non-electric fencing of active breeds of goat, and high tensile wire is ideal, because while goats won't eat metal a la cartoons, they will use their mouths to explore and their teeth are like tinsnips. They're also well known for learning to open simple latches with their lips and tongues.
> 
> The twins are able to keep up with Cooper because of two things. One, they spend some of their free time at SHIELD hanging out with the translation team being fed a steady diet of foreign language, and two, they have the Urquhart gift of rapid language learning. (See Harrowing by ValkyriePhoenix for more on the Alfar Clans and their gifts).


	13. The Continuing Adventures- Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crisis of various kinds interrupts the course of life.

Morning on the Farm wasn’t like mornings at home.  First of all, Unca Clint didn’t have an alarm clock, he had cats.  They didn’t let anybody sleep after they wanted breakfast, and they were  _ loud _ .  Secondly, Lila and the Twins went out to the chicken house with Laura before breakfast to get eggs out of the boxes.  Lila got three, Colin found two, and when Laura was busy holding an angry hen, Caddell managed to find four.  Laura put them all in a basket and took them in to help her make french toast.

Laura also didn’t make french toast the same.  She used actual toast that was crunchy, then dipped it in egg goo and fried it.  And she used cinnamon in a fancy shaker to put stars and hearts on it.

“No smiley faces?” Mam asked.

“I don’t like encouraging my children to eat anything that emotes,” Laura said.

Colin looked at Caddell.  Caddel shrugged.  Adults were strange.  They didn’t mind, the food was tasty and Cooper snuck them extra fried potato strings.

They finished their game with Cooper.  He won, but only because he’d set up a perfect spot on a triple word score for javeaux, and the ten point x on a double letter.  Then Unca Clint passed out cookies for playing a thinking game, and they finished paying back Lila for the first day’s ‘vance.

“What’cha doing today?” she asked as she put purple checks by their names green and blue.  Colin looked at Caddell.  Caddell nodded.

“We wanna go find a fort spot.”

“You want another ‘vance?” Lila asked.  The boys conferred.

“Yes please.  Three each again.”

After settling that and getting cookie supplies from Laura, they went for a long run around the big lawn with the dogs.  That was fun and they found a good napping spot in some shade under a bush at the edge of the lawn bit.  With some supplies it would make a good fort.  They went to Unca Clint for supplies, since he was in front of the shed with the stuff, and he was always good about getting things off shelves.  He gave them twine and some rough brown stuff for a tent, and a few short logs for chairs.  They had to make three trips with it all, because Unca Clint really understood the need for a well made fort.

Laura came and found them after they’d laid in the basics, and offered to show them a better knot for draping a tent over their line of borrowed twine.  It was good she wasn’t as mad anymore, she was good with knots.

“Welp, that’ll last until after lunch.  We’re having sausage, fruit, and cheese today.  If you help me in the side garden for half an hour, I’ll put together a basket and you can eat out here.”

Caddell looked at Colin.  Collin nodded.

“What d’ya want us to do?”

<^>

Laura started easy with them, showing them the little weeds that sprang up on the rows of larger plants, their size marking them for removal.  The boys proved speedy, thorough workers, and before the agreed half hour was up, she moved them to figuring out how to get runners of gill-on-the-ground up out of her lettuce so she could use it to make goat cheese.

An hour after they started, Laura stopped them and reapplied sunscreen to their faces.  She didn’t know if they’d been wearing any during fort construction, but she’d made them let her put it on them before moving to the garden.  Sun was a real killer, and she knew well enough from Nat that  redheads burn.

“Okay, I think that’s enough, so let’s go get you a basket for your lunch.”

The twins cheered, and ran ahead of her.  In the kitchen, she opened a tall cabinet and pulled out a smallish wood lunch-pail to pack thick slices of summer sausage and goat cheese wrapped in cheesecloth.  Two apples and a bunch of grapes sat on top, just under the lid.  She checked the latch and handed it to the boys, happy they wanted to eat outside.  Barney had managed to set the stove on fire again trying to make coffee when the coffee maker went out, and was still in town with Clint getting the replacement heating element.  Her kids understood the fact of living in a farmhouse, that sometimes you ate cold food, but they didn’t treat it like an adventure anymore.

Sometimes she regretted that.

She plated up sausage and cheese for Cooper, and assembled a cheese-and-fruit kebab for Lila, then went to grab a more liquid refreshment for herself and Ciara.  She was about to open the scotch when her phone rang.  Not the house phone that was in the local phone book, and not the cell that was on the kid’s school records, but the number listed as non-operational and known by only five people.

“Barton farm, Laura speaking,” she said into the receiver.

“Hey Laura,” Clint said casually.  “Is Barney home yet?”

“Um, no,” she replied, instantly suspicious.  “Isn’t he with you?”

“Didn’t he call to tell you?  Nat and I got called for an emergency mission, we’re over international waters right now.”

“Tell Laura I will bring presents for the deti when we get back!” she heard Natasha shout.

“Nat said…”

“I heard,” Laura interrupted.  “To clarify an earlier point, you left Barney alone in town?  When?”

“Laura, this mission is super classified,” Clint complained.  “Loose lips sink ships.”

“Tell me how long you left my husband unsupervised or Nick Fury will  _ wish _ all I did was sink a few ships.”

“Two hours, maybe two and a half,” Clint supplied.  “We needed to go by the bank because the hardware store had a problem with the card reader and could only take cash.  I left him outside the door to the hardware store.”

“You left Barney in town, with enough cash for a new heating element?” she asked.

“And a replacement coffee maker, and a fire extinguisher, because it’s not good to go without one and we killed the last one on the stove fire.”

“Clint,” she said calmly, trying not to scream in frustration.  “The hardware store is directly across from Yertle’s!”

“Aww futz,” he sighed, seeming to grasp the situation.  “Okay, let me go destabilize a budding dictatorship and I’ll be right back.  Love you Laura!”

“Clint!”  It was no use, he’d hung up.

“Problems?” Ciara asked from the doorway.

“Grab the kids, I need to go rescue my husband.”

<^>

Sheriff Graham was well acquainted with most of the trouble that could crop up in town.  He knew all the locals, and the local trouble makers, and usually could head off problems with a slice of pie and a good talking-to.  Of course, some problems were just a little too big for one small-town Sheriff, and Laura Barton was one of them.

“Now Laura,” he said, hoping he could stop this before any blood got shed.  He wasn’t best pleased by Barney Barton’s habits either, but an angry spouse rampaging through Yertle’s never ended without five arrests.  “I’ve not had a call from in there yet.  Why don’t you take your kids on over to Marian’s and have something to eat, and I’ll go tell Barney you want to talk to him?”

“Because that talk will end in him convincing you that a man’s got a right to drink, and Tom Bridgman convincing you that the town local needs customers, and Burt Costigan convincing you that I’m a shrew and a harpy who doesn’t treat my man right, and then I’ll be in the same position I am now, but with a longer list of people I’m not happy with,” Laura said patiently.  “I’ve got exactly two nerves left, and Barney has a reserved spot on one of them.  Do you really want a slot on the last?”

Graham took a moment to figure out what she’d said, then swallowed.  “Laura, you know when you walk in Yertle’s it ends with the phrase “disturbing the peace”.  And if Barney really has been doing something to warrant your displeasure, well… think of your kids.”

“I am,” Laura said tartly.  “My kids need to see me stand up to anybody who’s trying to convince me I shouldn’t do what I know to be right.”

“And just who is gonna watch them if you and your husband are in jail?” Graham asked.

“Tha’s what Auntie Ciara’s for,” Lila Barton piped up from her Momma’s hip, cheerful as a sunbeam and just as likely to drive you mad under long exposure.  She twisted to look behind her towards the Jeep Laura drove when she came to town.  “Auntie Ciara, will you play Martian Chess with us later?”

“Sure honey, but you’ll need to teach me how,” said a woman with short red hair, holding Cooper Barton’s hand as they crossed a street towards Laura Barton.  “Laura, would you like me to flash a badge at this chucklehead, or do you need stress relief?”

“I’ve got it for now, Hon,” Laura said, waving her hand dismissively.  “Graham’s slow, but he’s not stupid.  He knows not to get between a Bonneville woman and what she’s decided to do.  Isn’t that right, Graham?”

“Laura… I really want to make it to the end of the week without having to call a circuit judge,” Graham pleaded.  He was smarter than a doorpost, so he did know not to make her too mad, the Bonneville girls had always had tempers, but he was really close to a record.  “Please don’t destroy property or kill anybody.”

“I won’t,” Laura said, then paused.  A horrified look passed over her face and for a second of child-like horror, Graham considered closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see what had scared her.  “Ciara… we left the Twins at the farm!”

The other woman paled, and Graham thought he saw the family resemblance to Nat Barton when the ruddy glow left her cheeks.  Frankly, Nat Barton probably scared him more than both Barton Brothers put together, even if Barney was liquored up.

“I’ll start the car, you get the husband,” she said calmly.  “And if this guy gives you trouble, shoot first and we’ll fight over who does paperwork later.  I don’t even want to _know_ what my kids got up to in the hour we left them on the farm alone.”

“Right then,” Laura said and pushed past Graham.  He followed her, somewhat bewildered, into the bar.  He was too confused to even do much beyond gasp when she climbed onto the bar’s signature turtle racing ring.  “Barnabus Quincy Barton, we have a Code Chartreuse!  Get your good-for-nothing butt back to the farm, or I will let Clint cook you hamburgers for the fourth!”

“Holy shit!” said someone in the back room.  Graham registered something falling over and the sound of breaking glass, then Barney Barton and five very large men piled out of a smokey doorway.  Laura hopped off the ring and nodded to Graham.  It looked like for once, a Barton household squabble wasn’t going to cost anyone jail time.

By the end of the day, he would learn to regret his foolhardy optimism.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Emotes: shows emotion, like smiling.  
> Javeaux: deposits of sand and silt due to the overflow of a watercourse.  
> Deti: children (Russian)  
> Martian Chess: a pyramid game from Looney Labs. It's a good 4 player chess game.  
> Chucklehead: idiot.  
> Circuit Judge: the traveling judge that serves rural areas too small to have a courthouse or a local judge. 
> 
> Notes:  
> Farm cats are a good wake-up system, better than roosters, especially since usually they only try to wake the adults (those most likely to feed them). The Barton cats are mixes of Maine Coon, American Shorthair, and Siamese, so they are large, muscular, and _loud_. Hence waking anyone not super adjusted to them.
> 
> There are different opinions out there about smiley-faces on food, but I personally hold Laura's position, that it's strange to want to eat food that looks like it might be sentient. I like meat as much as the next gal, but I don't like eating anything that's currently got a face as it sits on my plate.
> 
> Clint gives the boys burlap for their tent, since it's a common farm supply and also reasonably sturdy for childhood building projects.
> 
> Learning weeding starts with "if it's tiny and around big things, it's a weed" and moves to "if it has these leaves/vines/buds, it's a weed" before ever hitting understanding why things might be weeds. Some weeds are actually useful as long as you don't let them choke out other plants. Gill-on-the-ground is one, and it's useful for brewing beer and making cheese without animal rennet.
> 
> Pale skin and red hair tend to be indicators of a tendency to get really bad sunburns, and Laura knows the general dangers of sun exposure, because she works a farm.
> 
> The phrase "Loose lips sink ships" has been used in wartime to emphasize that even small things can be damaging if in enemy hands. Stuff like how long it's been since he was in town and being over international waters can add up into classified information.
> 
> Graham is a good guy, really, he's just stuck in a small town mindset and used to keeping everyone happy. Unfortunately, that mindset means he's easily persuaded to let people keep making bad choices until they break the law, and he's unlikely to want to let anyone disrupt the status quo.
> 
> This is set before Nat and Clint hooked up, but because of having partial information, Sheriff Graham thinks Nat is Clint and Barney's sister, hence 'Nat Barton'. Ciara and Nat are both redheads, so he's also just filed Ciara as a Barton sister, too.


	14. The Continuing Adventures- Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What the Twins got up to at the Farm.
> 
> Cookies: stolen.  
> Goats: out.
> 
> Sanity is forcibly removed from the premises.

The fort was a good fort, the Twins agreed.  It was large enough for the two of them to lay out their lunch on the white cloth that had be around the sausage and cheese and have a picnic.  It wasn’t quite large enough for a game, though, and besides, staying in the fort wasn’t much different than staying in the house.  Fortunately, Unca Clint had a REALLY BIG backyard, with lotsa trees.

Unfortunately, their adventuring supplies were low.

After some discussion, they decided it was okay to take desserts they’d earned, if Laura wasn’t nearby to give them out.  So they swept the front step, fed all the animals, washed the walls of the shed, and pulled up more of the vine-shaped weed Laura said made cheese.  Then they climbed the shelves and got down about-enough chocolate chip cookies and brownies to have earned them.

Collin made sure they had chalk for marking paths, and Caddell wrapped up leftover sausage and apples with the desserts in the cloth, and the two took off into the woods.  They drew arrows on rocks and trees to point which way they’d gone, so they could go back the same way, like they did in the vents at the Tri’skellington.

They were deeply engaged in a debate about the best trees for climbing when they heard the sound.

Some men were setting up their own fort in Unca Clint’s backyard.  They were big, and they smelled funny, and most of them had sandpaper face like Nasty Rumlow.  One of them was singing a song that had words in it the Twins weren’t supposed to use.  Collin did not think Unca Clint invited them.  Caddell thought they should leave.  

It didn’t look like they planned on leaving anytime soon, because they had lots of big crates that looked heavy, and only one truck, that already had stuff on it.

So obviously, they had to be made to leave.

Step one was obviously to make it easy for them to leave, because you can’t ask someone to do something and not help them do it.  The truck had rocks by its wheels, and it couldn’t drive over those, so the Twins helped remove them.

Step two was to make staying put seem like a bad idea.

That was a little harder, since the twins were really small compared to the rude men.  After some debate, they ran back to the farm and carefully let only two large goats out of the pen before latching it again.  Collin made sure the gate was shut as Caddell told the goats what they wanted.  The goats seemed happy to walk with them to the edge of the woods as long as Caddell kept handing them hay, but goats eat a lot of hay and the handfuls the boys had ran out as they got close to where they’d planned to use a fallen tree to get on the goats and ride them.  Without hay, the goats didn’t seem to want to stand still, and they ran off.

“Uh oh,” Caddell said.

“We gotta get ‘em back,” Collin agreed.

“Dogs?”

“Dogs.”

<^>

Hubert White (pronounced WY-tuh, like the county, not why-TUH like the color) enjoyed going out with his friends in the Militia from time to time.  He liked shooting, and he loved his country, and he wasn’t a fan of having to watch his language all the time as words became supposedly inappropriate.  He wasn’t, as some implied, a bad man, but lately the feeling in town was a little less hospitable to a man who liked to keep things simple, the way they’d been when he was a child.  It wasn’t, for instance, that he objected to any of the Bonneville sisters wearing work clothes and helping out with the farm, he just thought it’d be nice if they put the thought into wearing proper clothes in town.  Likewise, he couldn’t object to Demetrius Freeman running the hardware store, as the man always kept a nice shop, but when he married a white woman, Hubert worried about what the kids’d look like.

Out in the woods with his buddies sometimes seemed the only place he could say such things and not immediately suffer some kind of lecture.  Of course, nature was out close to God, away from the sin of the world of Man, so obviously he’d find peace there.

Or so he thought, until a black goat landed on Mark Dobson right after he finished singing a funny little work song that would have brought him a nasty glare from the busybodies in town.

“AHHH, DEMONS!” Mark screamed.  “I’m sorry Lord, I’ll change my ways!”

“Calm down,” Gunny Tom scolded.  “It’s just some wild goat, gone climbing trees after the fruits.  You know they do that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mark sighed, relaxing visibly.  “But a pure black wild goat?  Just a mite strange, is all.”

“Maybe it escaped from a farm near here,” Hubert suggested.  “Whose farms back up to these woods?  Anyone keep goats?”

Cayson Tolette shook his head.  “Our land’s the closest, but this is basically wild territory.  I wouldn’t know who kept a black goat near here.”

The issue was about to be dropped when there was a great baying sound, and a crack like thunder, despite the clear blue sky above the clearing.

“Heavenly Father have mercy on us,” Mark prayed.  Hubert looked around at the rest of the Militia.  People were eyeing their weapons, but also each other, not wanting to look weak in front of the others.  Gunny Tom rolled his eyes, but he signalled two of the younger ones to go out and check with the teams on watch.

<^>

Dixon Calvert wasn’t afraid of much.  Airplanes, public speaking, and the government taking away his guns, pretty much covered the list, and he figured that was a pretty good showing.  He especially didn’t count airplanes as a real fear, per se, since man was not meant to fly or the Lord would have given him wings.  However, he was rapidly concluding he could find it in himself to be afraid of the unholy beast that had been stalking his watch the past five minutes.  The thing was the size of his woodshed, covered in fur so thick he wasn’t sure shooting it wouldn’t just make it mad, and it occasionally let out a high, shrieking ululation at odds with its bulk.

When Sammy Caster’s boy came round to check on them, Dixon grabbed him and dragged him into the safety of the small hollow under the roots of an oak.

<^>

Gunny Tom was starting to sweat.   His power in the Militia came from being the one with actual combat experience, nevermind that he was stationed in Germany during ‘Nam and discharged on account of not taking orders from no black devil.  The fact that he’d served was enough, as long as nobody challenged him, and usually the fact he’d served kept folks from challenging him, creating a neat little circle of power begetting more power.

When something challenged that, though, he got a bit nervous, ‘specially since he’d only ever fought in brawls.

“Stay calm, men,” he ordered, proud of how steady he kept his own voice as the Hounds of the Devil Himself leapt from the edge of the treeline.

“You not supposdta be here,” piped one dog, the one who looked like an unnatural union with a lion was somewhere in his family tree.

“Not your land,” agreed a blue-faced demon riding the oversized greyhound with red ears.  Paddy was muttering behind him in that strange gabble Micks used.  Another demon crawled out of the fur of the lion-beast and brandished a tiny sword at him.

“Leave.”

Gunny Tom weighed the options, considered how many times he’d been told his soul was damned, and broke for the truck.  His men protested, but in times of crisis you were only as strong as the weakest link.  The strong would survive.

He was so focused on that, he didn’t pay attention to the blocks having been moved, and instead of backwards up the path, the truck went forwards into the supply tent.

<^>

Caddell was feeling a bit chagrined.  He liked that word, he’d learned it from Cooper.  It meant that feeling when something you did didn’t quite do what you meant and everyone made a big deal over it.  Like the rocks by the truck wheels.  They’d moved them so the truck could leave, except instead the truck slid over into a white canvas building and came out the other side covered in sticky brown stuff.  The BadMans ran around in circles trying to figure out what to do, and mostly just got in each others ways.

Which meant they weren’t leaving.

Caddell was about to cry about how unfair it all was when Mam and Laura showed up.

Followed by Unca Barney and a man in silly brown clothes.

Followed by five Really Big men.

And then the adults were shouting at each other and Colin was leading Caddell and the dogs back to the farm, because Caddell had just about had enough of loud adults.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Tri’skellington: Twin for the Triskelion, the headquarters of SHIELD.  
> Sandpaper face: stubble or five o'clock shadow. Not a beard, but also not clean shaven.  
> Micks: a derogatory term for Irish people.
> 
> Notes:  
> The twins have not got a huge catalog of racial epithets individually, but with their Urquhart Gift on language, slurs all kind of translate to 'vague bad word for Other' and they know that's not nice to say. They also have a pretty good feel for when people aren't supposed to be doing as they are.
> 
> The dogs discussed are the Ovcharka ([Caucasian Shepard](https://www.europuppy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/caucasian-shepherd1.jpg)) and the Borzoi ([Russian Wolfhound](https://www.google.com/url?q=http://borzoi-color.batw.net/images/CodyRtSide142_100.jpeg&sa=D&ust=1514577883588000&usg=AFQjCNHFTo_KFGQysBCZ6L4A1rxHT4BiLA)) rescued from Irkutsuk. Both are large enough for small boys to ride them.
> 
> In Tennessee, White County is pronounced WY-tuh. Hubert is actually a transplant to Virginia from that county and is quite proud of that.
> 
> Most people would prefer not to think of themselves as bad people. So when otherwise normal, nice individuals do racist/sexist/ablist things, they rationalize it. The worst level of this is dehumanizing the victim population to allow for something like slavery or genocide in an otherwise sane person's worldview, but the men here show a range, as is usual for prejudiced groups, since even jerks are not a monolith. Hubert is on the shallow end, he doesn't like change and he started in a world where ladies wore stockings and black folks kept their eyes down when white people passed. Gunny Tom is closer to the rationalizations of slave-holders, holding on to the idea that he, as a white man of English descent, is superior to non-whites, non-males, and people of non-Anglo origin.
> 
>  
> 
> You'll notice a number of religious references among the Militia, due to the common co-opting of religion by hate-groups, militant isolationists, and other gatherings of violent anti-social sorts. That's not to say any religion used as such holds those beliefs itself, it's just that Faith is a good gateway to Belief, and Belief is a target for the founders of such groups.
> 
> Wild goats are usually not as big nor as willing to go near people as domestic wool-goats. The goats freed are [Don goats](http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/goats/don/index.html) with a little bit of [Altai mountain goat](http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/goats/altaimountain/index.html/). Both are big, sturdy, thick-coated breeds with very large and pointed horns. They look quite sinister.
> 
> The Borzoi has red ears, like the Hounds of the Wild Hunt. Paddy (not his real name, but a common nickname for Irish men) has problems with tiny blue people on red eared dogs calling him out for trespassing for Very Different Reasons than Tom, but Tom lacks the cultural sensitivity or concern to know why.
> 
> The Strong Survive is a lovely bit of self-defeating advice that apocalypse preppers and militant anarchists tend to propagate, which betrays them because humanity is a pack-building species and we need each other.


	15. The Continuing Adventures - Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cleaning up a mess and bringing everyone home.

Laura got to the house first, probably because she bailed out before the Jeep had stopped moving.  The front step looked different, cleaner, and the welcome mat was crooked.  A muddy bundle of gill-on-the-ground was on her dining table.  The shed, visible from the kitchen window, was sparkling white up to around three and half feet, where it returned to its usual dusty grey, and the talking knight cookie jar that housed her brownie balls had been disarmed and raided.

“How grounded are my children?” Ciara asked as she set Lila down beside Cooper.  Both children were wide-eyed and pale, looking at the half-wrought devastation.

“All the damage is reversible,” Laura said slowly.  “So it depends on where we find them.  Let’s start at their fort.”

The fort led them to goat-and-dog prints, which led into the woods.  The goat pen was latched, but two of her black Don goats were missing.  Given the last time the Twins had felt the need to liberate goats, Ciara had gone back to grab her service pistol just in case, and Barney and Sheriff Graham had been instructed to stay put.  Laura had few hopes for that, but it put Ciara in the lead, at least, and the good Sheriff wasn’t likely to get jumpy with a federal officer leading.

The path through the woods had at least been clearly marked in sidewalk chalk, so Laura pushed the dire fears of lost children to the ‘not as likely’ worry folder of her mind.  Then Ciara pointed out movement and the sound of a truck crashing echoed through the trees.  She hit a dead run and then pulled up short as she looked at the town’s collected malcontents having some kind of mass hysteria over Cayson Tolette’s truck, which was covered in molasses and wrapped around a tree.

“What.  Is.  Going.  On.  Here?” Laura bit out.  The men shouted and waved, and pointed guns.

“Feck it, I’m getting my kids,” grumbled Ciara.  “Boys, house.  Now.”

Laura was fighting down the sinking feeling that she’d have to call the sheriff anyway when he appeared beside Barney, both sweating heavily.

“That rifle’s not a hunting gun,” Barney said slowly as he processed the scene.  “And you have the wrong kind of fertilizer in that mix.”

“What?” the sheriff asked.

“That’s an intermediate nutrient mix,” Barney explained.  Laura loved when he actually showed off the big sexy brain he hid behind bad decisions.  “It doesn’t have nitrogen or phosphorus.  That makes it basically useless for the fertilizer bomb they were building.”

“B-b-bomb?!?”

Everyone began shouting at once.

<^>

Burt Costigan was not a man you trifled with.  He was also not a man you ran out on in the middle of a poker game just because your wife called.  So when Barney Barton did just that, he got the entire biker population of Yertle’s bar after him.

The Barton farm was a bit out-of-the-way, more a small, self-supported operation than a business.  Sure they sold a bit, especially goat wool and whatever surplus of corn came up, but that was more to change goods to money to buy what they didn’t make.  Burt actually admired that; Laura may have been a bit of a bitch, but she was a self-sufficient bitch who could live off the grid if she needed, and that was worth something.

Also, he thought her sister-in-law was hot.  Nat Barton riding into town on a custom-painted Ural Patrol in matching cherry red leathers was a vision he wouldn’t jeopardize seeing again, so he tried to be nice to Barney.

They parked their bikes a respectful distance from the house when a loud crash sounded and Barney and the Law ran out and sprinted to the tree-line.  Burt grumbled, but waved his men forward.

“No, you idjit,” someone said as Billy Cook tried to restart his bike.  “ You wanna start a blood feud?”

“But, I… what?” the kid said.  Burt rolled his eyes and hauled the kid off his seat and down the way Barton ran.

“You never drive over farmer’s land, it kills the dirt,” he explained.  “It’s the land-man’s version of sugaring a tank.  You wouldn’t sugar a tank, would you?”

“No!  ‘Course not,” Billy said, shaking his head.  “Thanks for the warning.”

They tramped through the underbrush, and got to the clearing as Barney was chastising some assembled skinheads for improper bomb-making.

“SHADDUP!” Burt yelled.  The skinheads quaked, but also quieted.  “Barney, you owe me another round of cards.  But I’ll forgive you, since you’ve got a small traitor infestation.”

One of the men, in an improperly worn uniform, began ranting.  Burt handed his spare knuckle dusters to Rife.  The biker had served honorably as a Marine, and came home half deaf and unable to drive anything with four wheels.  He had a right to the first hit of the fake officer.  Rife laid the man out, and there was more shouting.  “WHADDISAY?” Burt yelled again, silencing the assembled group.

The redhead beside Laura knelt to check the fallen idiot’s pulse, pulled free a small medallion, and scowled.  “I need to call Unca Mick,” she said softly.  Burt liked her voice, the accent was musical and the tone was knife sharp.  “There’s an octopodal infection going around.”

“Fucking cephalopods,” Laura sighed.  “Burt, I know you don’t much like me, but would you mind terribly doing me a favor and tying these trespassers up until the authorities can claim them?”

“I thought he was the authorities?” Burt asked, pointing to the sheriff.

“He’s the  _ local  _ authorities.  I plan on handing these to federal authorities, because they built  _ bombs _ near my  _ children _ , and nothing short of some sort of super classified government black site will keep me from killing them to stop my nightmares.”

“Honey, this mess wouldn’t explode if you stuffed fireworks in it and lit the whole thing on fire,” Barney soothed.  “It’d barely smolder.”

“And that’s lovely for you, because you have a history with pyrotechnics and safe explosions and unsafe explosions and the difference between them,” Laura sighed, and Burt saw actual fear on her face for the first time.  “I’m a housewife, and a farmer, and I make damn good booze, but I have never once dealt with anything that was  _ meant _ to explode.  It scares me that it was so close to our family.  We’re supposed to be safe here.”

“We will be,” Barney promised, hugging her close.  The unexpected vulnerability made Burt blink.  Maybe Laura wasn’t such a bitch after all.

“You heard the lady,” he said, snapping fingers at his men.  “Tie ‘em up, and teach ‘em a lesson about dangerous shit near little kids.”

“Um,” the sheriff started.

“I will do all the paperwork,” the redhead promised, “if you just don’t make a scene.  Now, where’s my boys go?  Ah, back that way, through the massive tunnel of underbrush drilled by an Ovcharka.  Obviously.”

<^>

Clint landed at the family landing site and bailed out of his seat almost as soon as the wheels hit the ground.  Nat smoothly took over post-flight checks, and he once again thanked Fate for having put him in her path, because only someone who longed for family like she did would have known why he was practically apparating to the side of women who weren’t his sisters in any way except the one that counts.  And only someone who had the training Nat did could have been his calm while they finished a time-critical mission knowing said sisters might be in trouble.  She would need lots of aftercare later, being his calm meant going full arachnid and she was never in a happy headspace after, but that’s what partners were for.

“Laura, Ciara!  I finished as fast as I could.”

“You stink of fish and candy,” Ciara said, pushing his hug towards Laura to dodge.  “What happened?”

“We did the caterer ruse to access the oligarch, and he had a mutant bodyguard, so I rode the honey-glazed salmon out the second floor juliet balcony window while Nat finished planting the evidence.  I’m sorry I didn’t bring treats, we rushed to get home.”

“I forgive you and the boys are in time out for failure to consult an adult before hunting militant extremists in the woods on dog-back.”  Ciara sighed and squeezed the less-sticky parts of his arms in a substitute hug.  “Unca Mick is sending some cleaners and a few transports to haul off the rest of your infestation.  I’m glad you’re okay, Clint.”

“Of course,” Natasha said from behind him.  “I will not let my partner be compromised.  Now, Clint, you should wash.  I will play with the detki.  Ciara can handle Fury and his people.  Laura-”

“Will be rewarding my husband for bringing home a suitable amount of muscle to handle the homegrown idiots and also for knowing what fertilizers are mostly not dangerous to mix with molasses,” Laura interrupted.  Nat looked blankly at her. Laura sighed and translated into the one language Nat never lost in the calm, still, deadly place in her heart, pop-culture references.  “We’ll be in our bunk.”

“Ah, good,” Nat agreed, a touch of color coming back into her cheeks as she steered them into the house.  As Clint let her shove him into the bathroom, he heard the appreciative hum of Burt, and looked over to see three bikers in full leathers losing at Martian Chess to Lila, currently in a Rapunzel dress complete with a frying pan by her hand.

“I’m not asking,” Clint said, locking eyes with Burt.  He didn’t care for the guy, but he didn’t want to jeopardize Lila’s chess hustle with a scene.

“Thanks,” Burt grunted.

“Touching, now bathe,” Natasha snapped at him, pushing harder.  She wasn’t trying to upend him or he wouldn’t be standing, but she was insistent.  “You have scales in your hair.  It is disgusting.”

A shower made him feel more human, and the extra time with Lila and Cooper returned most of the life to Nat’s face, although Clint didn’t really relax until she snapped at Burt to ‘take a picture, it’ll last longer.’  Fury’s people came and went with almost no visible interference, and Laura and Barney emerged in time to insist that Burt and his people stay for dinner.  Dinner itself was barbeque cooked outside while Clint and Barney fixed the stove, and a big murder salad.  Burt looked about as sour when given the salad as Lila was about being offered mustard on her hot dog, but Nat gave the bikers a glare and pointedly bit a stick of beet in half.  After that, there were no complaints about her cooking.

“So, that was a big day,” Laura remarked tiredly as the men around her gathered plates and cups to take in.  “What’s say we pull out the projector and have a drive-in night?”

“Monsters!” Lila shouted.

"Lilo and Stitch?  Monsters Inc?" Clint asked, trying to confirm which of several movies she might want with monster main characters.

“I don’t want to watch a cartoon, what about E.T.?” Cooper suggested.

“Oh, or Home Alone,” Barney offered.

“No,” Ciara said firmly.  “The boys are not allowed to watch that yet.  You know what they’re capable of.”

“Princess Bride,” Natsha said quietly.  Suddenly everyone in the family was looking at her and remembering it had been a bad mission.  “We will watch Princess Bride, and I will eat Milk Duds and popcorn.”

“Okay, Nat,” Clint said firmly.  “Princess Bride and movie snacks it is.”

“Is that a girl movie?” Billy Cook asked Cooper quietly.

“No, it has sword fights and monsters and a prince who’s a real jerk,” Cooper said, “so it’s an everyone movie.  You’ll like it.”

“Okay, settle down,” Laura called as she finished plugging in the movie projector protected by the barn so it shone on the white wall of the house.  “Ten minute warning for snacks and bathrooms!”

“Make me the popcorn with the lemon dust,” Nat ordered Clint.  He laughed, only Nat liked the lemon-extract salt on popcorn.

“As you wish.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Wrapped around a tree: crashed into a tree.  
> Sugaring a tank: putting sugar in a gas tank, wrecking the engine.  
> Skinheads: common slang for neo-nazis or other militant jackasses.  
> Apparate: the teleportation used in the Harry Potter books.  
> Full Arachnid: Natasha's Black Widow mode, cold, cruel, calculating.  
> Detki: kids  
> We'll be in our bunk: Firefly-fandom slang for having sex.
> 
> Notes:  
> The Twins perspective last chapter covers having done chores as though they did them fully and correctly, but in this chapter we get to see that the Twins idea of a chore being "done" and an adults are not the same. Because they're kids, and have small bodies, short attention spans, and a lack of anything resembling impulse control.
> 
> The last time the twins freed a goat was the Irkutsuk Incident, which ended... badly. Not dissimilar to this incident, actually.
> 
> Barney isn't a genius like Tony, but he's also not an idiot. Like Clint he's very good at practical applications of science, only his runs to things-what-blow-up rather than angles to shoot and wind resistance. This is part of why Laura was enticed to marry him and make babies, because brains are sexy.
> 
> Fertilizer bombs use a mix of things to blow up, but mostly what they need is nitrogen or phosphorus, neither of which is in an intermediate fertilizer mix.
> 
> Nat drives an [Ural Patrol](https://www.imz-ural.com/patrol/), a Russian motorcycle with a sidecar for passengers or carrying gifts for her godkids. It's cherry red with white and black accents and matches her red leather gloves, pants, and jacket which she wears to ride, as well as working with her [Star Wars](http://assets.motorcyclegear.com/image/path/69538/small/0836-1231-03.jpg) helmet.
> 
> Burt Costigan inherited the pirate soul, equating freedom with not being tied down or beholden, so he tends to use some nautical turns of phrase, like calling those who live stationary lives "land-men" and distrusting the authority of nations. However, he is a family-oriented guy and believes in protecting those who cannot protect themselves. His gang has a number of people with disabilities and/or other variances that make life in society hard.
> 
> Martian Chess is a four-person version of Chess made by Loony Labs using their pyramid pieces.
> 
> Murder salad is salad made by chopping up veggies with a big knife. It is so named because if Nat gets to use the big knife, she does not murder her postman.
> 
> "As you wish" was how the main male character of Princess Bride told the main female character he loved her.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Chaos Ensues](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12778440) by [BairnSidhe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BairnSidhe/pseuds/BairnSidhe), [ValkyriePhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValkyriePhoenix/pseuds/ValkyriePhoenix)




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